Distend

Quick meaning: Distend is a verb meaning (intransitive) To extend or expand, as from internal pressure; to swell.

Meaning

(intransitive) To extend or expand, as from internal pressure; to swell.

More Meanings

1. (transitive, reflexive, archaic) To extend; to stretch out; to spread out.
2. (transitive) To cause to swell.
3. (biology) To cause gravidity.

Example Sentences

But say, what mean those coloured streaks in heaven / Distended as the brow of God appeased?

I begin to hate the theater, the feeling wickedly distended by histrionics, all the 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.

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.

Word Forms

• distends
• distending
• distended

Synonyms for distend

Depending on context, synonyms include swell, dilate.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include swell, dilate, expand, decontract, unstretch, widen.

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