What is "detract"

Usage examples of "detract".

Even Peter Brigham as a bunkmate could not have detracted too much from that, he thought wryly.

As he declared these things, I did greatly lament with my selfe, to thinke of mine old and pristine estate, and what felicity I was sometimes in, in comparison to the misery that I presently susteined, being changed into a miserable Asse, then had I no small occasion to remember, how the old and ancient Writers did affirme, that fortune was starke blind without eies, because she alwaies bestoweth her riches upon evil persons, and fooles, and chooseth or favoureth no mortall person by judgement, but is alwaies conversent, especially with much as if she could see, she should most shunne, and forsake, yea and that which is more worse, she sheweth such evill or contrary opinions in men, that the wicked doe glory with the name of good, and contrary the good and innocent be detracted and slandred as evill.

Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature.

Invincible youth was around the board, and the two colonels lent dignity to the gathering, without detracting from its good cheer.

He assumed that Debora had orchestrated the types of stories Tio Moises told, but that did not detract from their potency as signs: they had the ring of truth, not of something tailored to his needs.

Her face had thinned, revealing a fine bone structure, and there were lines of care and laughter about her eyes and mouth that accentuated her loveliness rather than detracted from it.

But if the bulgy roundness of his person and the shortness of his legs in any way detracted from his personal importance, these trifling defects were, he was well aware, more than atoned for by the peculiar dignity of his countenance.

Focusing merely on monological and objective and exterior and scientific termsno matter how utterly truebeyond a certain point simply detracts away from the fundamental problem, hides the fundamental problem, buries it in a cloud of rhetoric and ideological foaming at the mouth.

The last time Monk had gotten the jump on him, it had been with a Miss Dawn O'Day, of the chorus, beautiful and wealthy—a wealthy chorine was quite a novelty, but it didn't detract from her virtues.

If our solution coincides with the Emperor’s, and in no way detracts from the perception that he alone really holds the reins of power… two E-years from that date.

The knowledge that it was a dream, however, in no way detracted from the feeling of menace as they rushed toward me.

The fact that he had obviously been reading it because I was coming in no way detracted from the compliment.

Syphax had died shortly before at Tibur whither he had been transferred from Alba, but his removal, if it detracted from the interest of the spectacle, in no way dimmed the glory of the triumphing general.

This detracted a little from the tone of injury in which the protests and demands had been couched.

Zouga was irritated and angry with her, for she had detracted from his own vaulting pleasure in his first elephant hunt.