DETRACT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does detract mean? 

• DETRACT (verb)
  The verb DETRACT has 1 sense:

1. take away a part from; diminish

  Familiarity information: DETRACT used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• DETRACT (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they detract    ... he / she / it detracts   
Past simple: detracted   
Past participle: detracted   
-ing form: detracting   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Take away a part from; diminish

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

detract; take away

Context example:

His bad manners detract from his good character

Hypernyms (to "detract" is one way to...):

bring down; cut; cut back; cut down; reduce; trim; trim back; trim down (cut down on; make a reduction in)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

detraction (the act of discrediting or detracting from someone's reputation (especially by slander))

detractive (causing to decrease in importance or value)

detractor (one who disparages or belittles the worth of something)

 Context examples 

With no difficult aspects to detract from this golden ray from Jupiter, the good fortune planet will bring you lucky breaks and options.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

“Never say I detracted from her!”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I assure you that it has not detracted in the tiniest iota from your appearance.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He is so; but then he is wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a Turk, and a kind of ignorant carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his conduct the more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy which otherwise he would command.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Neither do I say this, with the least intention to detract from the many virtues of that excellent king, whose character, I am sensible, will, on this account, be very much lessened in the opinion of an English reader: but I take this defect among them to have risen from their ignorance, by not having hitherto reduced politics into a science, as the more acute wits of Europe have done.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

But they would have been improved by some share of his frankness and warmth; and her visit was long enough to detract something from their first admiration, by shewing that, though perfectly well-bred, she was reserved, cold, and had nothing to say for herself beyond the most common-place inquiry or remark.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Peggotty knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing about her, she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of her having a magazine of jewellers' cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her presence.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

But, not to detract from a nation, to which, during my life, I shall acknowledge myself extremely obliged, it must be allowed, that whatever this famous tower wants in height, is amply made up in beauty and strength: for the walls are near a hundred feet thick, built of hewn stone, whereof each is about forty feet square, and adorned on all sides with statues of gods and emperors, cut in marble, larger than the life, placed in their several niches.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)