distend
verbUK /dɪˈstɛnd/
Etymology Borrowed from Latin distendō.
1
To extend or expand, as from internal pressure; to swell
- Then came the arrowy flight and form of the hurricane itself—its actual bulk—its imbodied power, pressing along through the forest in a gyratory progress, not fifty yards wide, never distending in width, yet capriciously winding from right to left and left to right.1835, William Gilmore Simms, The Partisan, Harper, Chapter XIV, page 180:
- I begin to hate the theater, the feeling wickedly distended by histrionics, all the old gestures, clutchings, tears, and applications.1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 147:
2
Archaic To extend; to stretch out; to spread out.
- These impure and frail matters are conteined within the angust concave of the Lunar Orb, above which with uninterrupted Series the things Celestial distend themselves.1661, Thomas Salusbury, System of the World in Four Dialogues, translation of Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei, Dialogue II, page 241:
- But say, what mean those coloured streaks in heaven / Distended as the brow of God appeased?1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
3
To cause to swell.
4
Biology, Natural sciences To cause gravidity.
- Derived terms
- distendable, distender, distensible, distensive