Word: protract
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...quite telling all. Hoping to weaken both British imperialism and the threat of a people's government in the New World, Spain had sent the colonies secret shipments of clothing, salt and munitions through the private mercantile house of Gardoqui & Sons-but only in quantities calculated to protract the struggle without making a real decision possible. When Washington's army began winning important victories, Spanish interest in the Revolution abruptly vanished...
...anxious courtship makes a long and languid evening. Farmer Stover shows twice the indecision of Hamlet without any of the excitement. The apple of his eye is a decent, agreeable girl but singularly unobservant. And the worried relatives, gabby neighbors and drawling farm help that punctuate-and protract-the evening are all stock-comedy figures...
This sort of comedy of the inhumanly vindictive antagonism by which a man and woman protract the ultimate inevitable plunge into each other's arms has, even at its silliest, some basis in truth. It is by no means new 1) to identify this skirmishing of the sexes with class warfare, 2) to resolve all class distinctions in the clinch. The one thing that gives this thousandth version any novelty is Alan Ladd's triple-chilled proficiency at handling all the tricks of making love in reverse gear. This is as interesting to look at, in a simpleminded...
...Russians saw their danger well (see col. 1). They hoped that the Red Army would protract the game, keep the Germans from reaching the Volga until winter froze the stakes. Said Pravda: "Every minute shows that the Germans are gambling their entire fortune on the present campaign...