distend

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪsˈtɛnd/
• Rhymes: -ɛnd

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.

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     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.

• distensible

• “distend” in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, →ISBN.

distend

1. third-person singular present indicative of distendre