- 1
To distend is to swell, or to make something swell, because of pressure from inside. A balloon distends as air goes in. A belly can distend after a big meal, from gas, or when a doctor is worried about something trapped or . Veins can distend when they fill. The movement is outward: the wall of the thing is pushed from within, not pulled longer from the ends. That is why it is not the same as extend, though the two look like cousins. Distend is a careful, often medical or scientific word. Ordinary talk uses swell, bloat, puff up, or fill out. You distend a thing that has a hollow or a wall; you do not distend a deadline or a visit.
使膨脹、鼓起來（從裡面撐開；醫學上常說肚子脹）
組成Borrowed from Latin distendō: dis- (apart) + tendō (I stretch).
同家族的字
- distendedthe swollen state, after something has distended
- distensionthe noun: the swelling itself
- extendsame Latin stretch root, but this one means stretch out in length or time, not swell from inside
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
distendverb/dɪˈstɛnd/
- 1
To extend or expand, as from internal pressure; to swell
- 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.
- 2
archaicTo extend; to stretch out; to spread out.
- 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.
- But say, what mean those coloured streaks in heaven / Distended as the brow of God appeased?
- 3
To cause to swell.
- 4
biologynatural-sciencesTo cause gravidity.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。