distend

English

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.

2. (transitive, reflexive, archaic) To extend; to stretch out; to spread out.
   • 1662 Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue 2):

     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.

3. (transitive) To cause to swell.
4. (biology) To cause gravidity.

Translations

To extend or expand

Bulgarian: , разтеглям (bg), разширявам (bg)

To cause to swell

Bulgarian: , раздувам (bg)

Derived terms

• distensible

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, 1989