distend

Definition

To extend or expand, as from internal pressure; to swell

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin distendō.

Example Sentences

• "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."
• "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."