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Distract   /dɪstrˈækt/   Listen
verb
Distract  v. t.  (past & past part. distracted, old past part. distraught; pres. part. distracting)  
1.
To draw apart or away; to divide; to disjoin. "A city... distracted from itself."
2.
To draw (the sight, mind, or attention) in different directions; to perplex; to confuse; as, to distract the eye; to distract the attention. "Mixed metaphors... distract the imagination."
3.
To agitate by conflicting passions, or by a variety of motives or of cares; to confound; to harass. "Horror and doubt distract His troubled thoughts."
4.
To unsettle the reason of; to render insane; to craze; to madden; most frequently used in the participle, distracted. "A poor mad soul;... poverty hath distracted her."


adjective
Distract  adj.  
1.
Separated; drawn asunder. (Obs.)
2.
Insane; mad. (Obs.)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Distract" Quotes from Famous Books



... Impatient of my absence, And grief that young Octavius with Mark Antony Have made themselves so strong: for with her death That tidings came; with this she fell distract, And, ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... You will laugh at me, but I do long to feel a real, keen temptation. Those agonizing struggles of holy men that one reads of, what can they be like? I can hardly imagine. There have been ascetics who have wept, and dashed themselves down on the ground, and injured, wounded their bodies to distract their thoughts from vice. To me they seem as madmen. You know the story of the monk who rescued a great courtesan from her life of shame. He placed her in a convent and went into the desert. But her image haunted ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... animal out of harness. This failing, spread clean litter beneath the belly or turn the patient out on the dung heap. Some seek to establish sympathetic action by pouring water from one vessel into another with dribbling noise. Others soothe and distract the attention by slow whistling. Friction of the abdomen with wisps of straw may succeed, or it may be rubbed with ammonia and oil. These failing, an injection of 2 ounces of laudanum or of an infusion of 1 ounce of tobacco in water may be tried. In the mare ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... perhaps too frequently, to the desire to make the reader live among the men and things of the fifteenth century. And in order not to distract him suddenly from them, I have avoided suggesting any comparison with other periods, although many such ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... came in very much heated. I withdrew to my post, where I listened. "What is the matter?" said Madame de Pompadour. "The long robes and the clergy," replied he, "are always at drawn daggers, they distract me by their quarrels. But I detest the long robes the most. My clergy, on the whole, is attached and faithful to me; the others want to keep me in a state of tutelage." "Firmness," said Madame de Pompadour, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various


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