distend
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /dɪsˈtɛnd/
Verb

distend (distends, present participle distending; past and past participle distended)

  1. (intransitive) To extend or expand, as from internal pressure; to swell
  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.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book 9”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:
      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.
Translations


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