PROTRACTED

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does protracted mean? 

• PROTRACTED (adjective)
  The adjective PROTRACTED has 1 sense:

1. relatively long in duration; tediously protracted

  Familiarity information: PROTRACTED used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PROTRACTED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Relatively long in duration; tediously protracted

Synonyms:

drawn-out; extended; lengthy; prolonged; protracted

Context example:

protracted negotiations

Similar:

long (primarily temporal sense; being or indicating a relatively great or greater than average duration or passage of time or a duration as specified)

 Context examples 

Such was the characteristic of Helen's discourse on that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed hastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during a protracted existence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It could be protracted no longer.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The brief Alaskan summer protracted itself beyond its usual length, and they took advantage of the opportunity, delaying their return to Skaguay to the last moment.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

Meltwater ponds fracturing the ice below them may not cause protracted chain reactions that unexpectedly collapse floating ice shelves.

(Reframing the dangers Antarctica's meltwater ponds pose to ice shelves and sea level, National Science Foundation)

I am prepared to agree with our colleague that a protracted stay in Maple White Land is at present inadvisable, and that the question of our return will soon have to be faced.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Old One Eye was not interested at all, but he followed her good-naturedly in her quest, and when her investigations in particular places were unusually protracted, he would lie down and wait until she was ready to go on.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

When I had arrived at this point and had become as well acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of the professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer conducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I am too well aware that when, in the inscrutable decrees of Fate, you were reserved for me, it is possible you may have been reserved for one, destined, after a protracted struggle, at length to fall a victim to pecuniary involvements of a complicated nature.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

She went, however, and they sauntered about together many an half-hour in Mrs. Grant's shrubbery, the weather being unusually mild for the time of year, and venturing sometimes even to sit down on one of the benches now comparatively unsheltered, remaining there perhaps till, in the midst of some tender ejaculation of Fanny's on the sweets of so protracted an autumn, they were forced, by the sudden swell of a cold gust shaking down the last few yellow leaves about them, to jump up and walk for warmth.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes—so long was the silence protracted.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)