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distend

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin distendō.

Pronunciation

Verb

distend (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
    • 1835, William Gilmore Simms, The Partisan, Harper, Chapter XIV, page 180:
      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.
    • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 147:
      I begin to hate the theater, the feeling wickedly distended by histrionics, all the old gestures, clutchings, tears, and applications.
  2. (transitive, reflexive, archaic) To extend; to stretch out; to spread out.
    • 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:
      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.
    • 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:
      But say, what mean those coloured streaks in heaven / Distended as the brow of God appeased?
  3. (transitive) To cause to swell.
  4. (biology) To cause gravidity.

Derived terms

Translations

References

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French

Pronunciation

  • Audio (Canada (Shawinigan)):(file)

Verb

distend

  1. third-person singular present indicative of distendre

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