Definition of "distend"

distend

/dɪˈstɛnd/

verb
third-person singular simple present distends, present participle distending, simple past and past participle distended
1. (intransitive) To extend or expand, as from internal pressure; to swell
  Quotations
  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, page 147
2. (transitive, reflexive, archaic) To extend; to stretch out; to spread out.
  Quotations
  I begin to hate the theater, the feeling wickedly distended by histrionics, all my old gestures, clutchings, tears, and applications. 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.
  1662 Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue 2)
  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], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,
3. (transitive) To cause to swell.
4. (biology) To cause gravidity.

Definition of "distend"

distend

verb

Quotations

Quotations