Unit02-TRACT-female

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TRACT comes fromtrahere, the Latin verb meaning “drag or draw.”Something attractive draws ustoward it. Something distracting pulls your attention away. And when youextract something from behind the sofa, you drag it out.

TRACT来自拉丁语的动词 trahere，意思是“拖或画”。说某物是 attractive，即是说某物吸引着我们。Distracting 即分散你注意力的事情。当你从沙发后面将某物 extract 出来时，意思是你把某物拖拽出来。

traction：Thefriction that allows a moving thing to move over a surface without slipping.

• The spinningwheels were getting no traction on the ice, and we began to slip backward downthe hill.

在冰上，轮胎失去了牵引力，我们开始向后滑下山丘。

A tractor issomething that pulls something else. We usually use the word for a piece of farm machinery, but it's also the nameof the part of a big truck that includes the engine and the cab. Tractors getterrific traction, because of their powerful engines and the deep ridges ontheir huge wheels. A cross-country skier needs traction to kick herself forward,but doesn't want it to slow her down when she's gliding, so the bottom of theskis may have a “fish-scale”surface that permits both of these at the sametime.

Tractor 指可以拉动别的东西的东西（牵引车）。我们通常用这个词来表示一些农业机械，但它也是一辆大卡车的一部分，包括引擎和驾驶室。拖拉机有极好的牵引力，因为它们有强大的发动机，巨大的轮子上有很深的隆起。越野滑雪者需要牵引力来推动自己前进，但又不想让它在滑行时速度减慢，所以滑雪板的底部可能有一个“鱼鳞”表面，这样可以同时满足这两种要求。

retract  (1) To pull back (something) into somethinglarger. (2) To take back (something said or written).

• She was forced toretract her comment about her opponent after it was condemned in the press.

在媒体谴责她后，她被迫收回了自己对对手的言论。

The prefix re-(“back”) gives retract the meaning of “draw back.” Just as a cat retracts itsclaws into its paws when they aren't being used, a public figure may issue aretraction in order to say that he or she no longer wants to say something thathas just been said. But it's sometimes hard to know what a retraction means:Was the original statement an error or an outrightlie?

前缀 re-（“往后back”的意思）给这个词 retract 带去了“收回（draw back）”的意味。就像猫在不被使用的时候缩回爪子一样，公众人物可能会撤回声明，以表示他/她不再想说刚刚说过的话。但有时候很难知道撤回声明时什么意思：最初的声明是一个错误还是一个彻头彻尾的谎言？

Sometimes apolitician even has to retract something that everyone actually assumes is thetruth. Thousands of citizens were forced to publicly retract their “wrong”ideas by the Soviet government in the 1930s and the Chinese government in the1960s. Someone wrongly accused may demand a retraction from his accuser—thoughtoday it seems more likely that he'll just go ahead and sue.

有时候，一个政客甚至不得不收回一些大家都认为是事实的东西。上世纪30年代的苏联政府和60年代的中国政府强迫成千上万的公民公开收回他们的“错误”思想。被冤枉的人可能会要求撤销对他的指控——尽管今天看来他更有可能直接起诉。

protracted：Drawnout, continued, or extended.

• No one was lookingforward to a protracted struggle for custody of the baby.

没有人希望争夺孩子监护权的斗争持续很久。

With its prefixpro-, “forward,” protracted usually applies to something drawn out forward intime. A protracted strike may cripple a company; a protracted rainy spell mayrot the roots of vegetables; and a protracted lawsuit occasionally outlives the parties involved. Before the invention of thepolio vaccines, polio's many victims had no choice but to suffer a protractedillness and its aftereffects.

Protracted 的前缀是 pro-，意思是“向前的（forward）”，通常用于表示时间上向前延伸的东西。长期罢工可能使公司瘫痪；长期的雨季会使蔬菜的根腐烂；一场矿体持久的诉讼有时会比当事人活得更久。在脊髓灰质炎疫苗发明之前，许多脊髓灰质炎患者别无选择，只能忍受一场旷日持久的疾病及其后遗症。

intractable：Noteasily handled, led, taught, or controlled.

• Corruption in thearmy was the country's intractable problem, and for many years all foreign aidhad ended up in the colonels' pockets.

军队中的腐败是该国的棘手问题，多年来外国援助都落入了上校们的口袋。

Intractable simplymeans “untreatable,” and even comes from the same root.

The word maydescribe both people and conditions. A cancer patient may suffer intractablepain that doctors are unable to treat. An intractable alcoholic goes back tothe bottle immediately after “drying out.”Homelessness, though it hardlyexisted thirty years ago, is now sometimes regarded as an intractable problem.

这个词既可以用来形容人，也可以用来形容环境，癌症患者可能会遭受医生无法治疗的顽固性疼痛。一个顽固不化的酒鬼在“喝光”之后会马上回到酒瓶里。虽然在三十年前几乎不存在无家可归（的情况），但现在有时被认为是一个棘手的问题。