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distend
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show 113 more with this conextual meaning
  • ...that's why she's distended like a summer gourd.   (source)
  • In Cite Soleil, where people live in huts the size of outhouses with sewage creeping between their toes, a boy with a distended belly sits with the flies.   (source)
    distended = swollen
  • Like a shark preparing to take bait, the goblin's jaws distended.   (source)
    distended = extended
  • I don't have a paunch, either. . . . . What I've got . . . I've got this little distension just below the belt . . . but it's hard . . . It's not soft flesh.   (source)
    distension = something that is extended or sticking out
  • "Han," rasped Theresa then, eyes wide.
    Helen froze.
    The moment distended.
    [when Theresa awakened at the hospital]   (source)
    distended = extended (seemed longer)
  • Dead dogs, cats and rats cluttered the roadside, or floated starkly on the waters with blown distended bellies.   (source)
    distended = extended or swollen
  • He was in trouble, his abdomen distended and his nose and ears hot.   (source)
    distended = swollen (sticking out)
  • Dan used the steak knives, darning needles, hair curlers, and nylon line, all properly sterilized, and removed an appendix distended and near to bursting.   (source)
    distended = extended or swollen
  • the dusty, heavily distended, black-tarred wineskin that hung neck down from the wall   (source)
    distended = extended (swollen outward)
  • He stood on the distended belly of the mule for a platform and made gestures.   (source)
    distended = extended outward
  • I hadn't grasped how days could be at once long and short. Long, no doubt, as periods to live through, but so distended that they ended up by overlapping on each other.   (source)
    distended = extended
  • "Now I'll read it," I cried, after having well distended my lungs with air.   (source)
  • He will soon begin to gorge his prey, and slowly but surely it will disappear down that distended maw!   (source)
    distended = extended or swollen
  • For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow.   (source)
  • Would he lift the pole and pilfer the king's chariot with his weapons, or take the life of still more Thracian men? His heart distended at the thought, when...   (source)
    distended = swelled
  • I hadn't seen him look so helpless since he'd crouched next to our wrecked station wagon, watching Mother's face bulge and distend, unable even to touch her because electrified cables were sending a deadly pulse through the metal.†   (source)
  • His nostrils distend.†   (source)
  • Great distending clouds of chalk and earth and granite spout into the sky.†   (source)
  • But this could not explain the clear distension of the lungs, which had to have been caused by the pressure of the sea, and so he revised his initial hypothesis and entered in his final report that the salt water swallowed by Alec Vilderling had been absorbed into his bloodstream while he yet lived.†   (source)
  • The eerie phone conversation had left him feeling turgid ....distended somehow.†   (source)
  • The vet said Marley's stomach had bloated with food, water, and air and then, stretched and distended, had flipped over on itself, twisting and trapping its contents.†   (source)
  • He appeared to be no more than thirty, but it was a hard thirty, his face haggard and his belly distended from too much partying.†   (source)
  • Ghosh exposed the grotesquely distended abdomen.†   (source)
  • The leeches wriggled slowly between her fingers as she plucked them carefully from the lord's body, their pale bodies moist to the touch and distended with blood.†   (source)
  • His brow was furrowed, almost wrinkled, his jaw ropy and distended.†   (source)
  • "You see," he said turning to Mr. Norton, "he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life.†   (source)
  • Iris is on her knees, gently rubbing the club foot, touching the distended arch and webbed toes as if they were the most wondrous things in the world.†   (source)
  • Gravy ran across the table and, before anyone could react, spilled onto Sonia's distended belly.†   (source)
  • Jason strained; the veins in the man's throat were distended to the point of bursting.†   (source)
  • If there were footsteps on the long flight of stairs, or a door closed suddenly, they jumped up, trembling, nostrils distended, eyes wide open.†   (source)
  • Not knowing what to do with it, but trying to avoid the extremes of gaucherie, I had arranged it and me on the blanket in a nonchalant posture—or as nonchalant as possible in my fit of ague—with my distended part concealed beneath my forearm; the attempt was unsuccessful, it flopped into view just before she flopped down beside me, and we rolled like dolphins into each other's arms.†   (source)
  • In the distended belly of the squat human figure halfway down the stick the special fetish was thought to be lodged.†   (source)
  • say the distended eyes from beyond the boundary of the trumpets, Hello and good-bye, and they are all down the first note like a waterfall.†   (source)
  • The skin was of a small animal, not identifiable when distended with water.†   (source)
  • the strange, yet comforting landscape of his mind, that the hand of God would surely lead him into this staring, waiting mouth, these distended jaws, this hot breath as of fire.†   (source)
  • It filled the room, musty, like animals; and her knees went liquid as her nostrils distended to find clean air and her head became giddy.†   (source)
  • She was misshapen; her belly, tight and heavy and distended, made it impossible for her to stand without supporting herself with her hands.   (source)
    distended = extended or swollen
  • ...the eyelids, now more closely welded to the eyeball, now distended;   (source)
  • "Give him air. He's fainted."
    The ring of onlookers distended and closed again elastically.   (source)
    distended = extended outward
  • The face of Etienne's watch appears to distend.†   (source)
  • His face was grey and green and ghastly, his mouth open and distended.†   (source)
  • I saw the inferior vena cava distend, like a garden hose filling with water.†   (source)
  • The action seemed to distend, as if in a time warp, all the insanity slowing to a crawl ....The branded camerlegno ....raving for the world to see ....The Illuminati Diamond ....unveiled in its diabolical genius ....The countdown clock registering the final twenty minutes of Vatican history ....The drama, however, had only just begun.†   (source)
  • His legs were already spindly and his taut, distended belly, like his tiny mother's goiter, was completely at odds with the rest of his thin, narrow body and alert face.†   (source)
  • A child, lifted on a man's shoulders to see over the crowd, grinned down at me, his lips distended over a set of plastic vampire fangs.†   (source)
  • China was changing, not fast enough for the West, and certainly it was still a paranoid giant, but withal, thought David Webb, the distended stomachs of children, so prevalent in the China of years ago, were disappearing.†   (source)
  • When the tube reached the distended bowel, they were rewarded with a loud sigh and the rattle of fluid and gas hitting the bucket below.†   (source)
  • They left the house as the distended red run dropped into the river where it joined the wide St. Johns.†   (source)
  • Then the young vet's hands went down and moved over hips and distended abdomen—trained and knowing hands.†   (source)
  • He had a distended bladder.†   (source)
  • Cope's lines regarding sudden blockage of the normal passage through the intestine came to him: ....rapid onset of distention Will certainly attract your keen attention.†   (source)
  • His distended chest collapsed; he bent over, laughing, and coughed dryly.†   (source)
  • Heaves the proud harlot her distended breast, in intricacies of laborious song.†   (source)
  • It was Belle Watling and Scarlett had a glimpse of nostrils distended with dislike before she disappeared again.†   (source)
  • The coat was pushed up under the armpits, the hands were crossed piously on the bosom like the hands of a gisant on a tomb in a cathedral, the shirt had pulled up some from its moorings under the belt and the two lowest buttons had come unbuttoned so that a triangular patch of slightly distended stomach was visible—white, with a few coarse dark hairs.†   (source)
  • Then, with a look of horror beyond anything language could convey, she threw back her head and drew the edge of her palm quickly across her distended throat—and vanished.†   (source)
  • I gibe and mock at this sad religion, at these tremulous, grief-stricken figures advancing, cadaverous and wounded, down a white road shadowed by fig trees where boys sprawl in the dust—naked boys; and goatskins distended with wine hang at the tavern door.†   (source)
  • Cheeks distended in a short customary puff, he dropped his cap on the wash-tub, leaned his new whip against it.†   (source)
  • So the Christmas came and he and Henry rode the forty miles to Sutpen's Hundred, with Henry still talking, still keeping distended and light and iridescent with steady breathing that fairy balloon-vacuum in which the three of them existed, lived, moved even maybe, in attitudes without flesh—himself and the friend and the sister whom the friend had never seen and (though Henry did not know it) had not even thought about yet but only listened about from behind the more urgent thinking, and Henry probably not even noticing that the nearer they came to home the less Bon talked, had no say on any subject, and maybe even (and certainly Henry would not know this) listening less.†   (source)
  • But made into a gruel it allayed the children's craving for a time and put something into their distended, empty bellies.†   (source)
  • His mouth was the very assertion of violent, uncurbed passions and tyrannical self-will; the full lips thrust out and taut, like the flesh of animals distended by fear or desire.†   (source)
  • Archie sat on a stool by the hearth, his back against the fireplace, his cheek distended with tobacco, whittling industriously on a bit of wood.†   (source)
  • She could do nothing but cling to the loose reins and the wagon seat, and gaze with distended eyes.†   (source)
  • Beneath their pierced, distended earlobes there dangled strings of beads made from bone.†   (source)
  • By degrees the hide of the kangaroo distended, altering the shape of the creature entirely.†   (source)
  • Marguerite's gaze rested for an instant on the brilliant, silvery waters; and as she gazed, her heart, which had been numb with pain for all these hours, seemed to soften and distend, and her eyes filled with hot tears: not three miles away, with white sails set, a graceful schooner lay in wait.†   (source)
  • His poppy-colored cheeks were distended with his first big bite of bread and bacon, but he managed to smile encouragingly.†   (source)
  • His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering.†   (source)
  • He watched the sorrel's savage head, pointed level, his mouth still closed and dry, but his nostrils distended as if he were snorting unseen fire.†   (source)
  • With the distended lungs, the spleen and kidneys and liver, the assistant made wavy smears on glass slides which were stained and given to the class for examination.†   (source)
  • But my mind, strained by this foreboding, distended like the look which I shot at my mother, would not allow any other impression to enter.†   (source)
  • He looked like a distended hot-water bottle; he was magnificently imbecile; he believed everything, he knew nothing, he could memorize nothing; and anxiously he forgave the men who got through the vacant hours by playing jokes upon him.†   (source)
  • And if, in spite of that, they were for me, in their capacity as a duke and a duchess, real people, though of an unfamiliar kind, this ducal personality was in its turn enormously distended, immaterialised, so as to encircle and contain that Guermantes of which they were duke and duchess, all that sunlit 'Guermantes way' of our walks, the course of the Vivonne, its water-lilies and its overshadowing trees, and an endless series of hot summer afternoons.†   (source)
  • And I should have liked to be able to sit down and spend the whole day there, reading and listening to the bells, for it was so charming there and so quiet that, when an hour struck, you would have said not that it broke in upon the calm of the day, but that it relieved the day of its superfluity, and that the steeple, with the indolent, painstaking exactitude of a person who has nothing else to do, had simply, in order to squeeze out and let fall the few golden drops which had slowly and naturally accumulated in the hot sunlight, pressed, at a given moment, the distended surface of the silence.†   (source)
  • It has a sort of howdah on its back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows are rolling, might be taken for the Traitors' Gate leading from the Thames by water into the Tower.†   (source)
  • —When the nostril shall be distended, the mouth agape, the eyes fixed and bloodshot; and when the proud and noble knight may be trodden on by the lowest caitiff of this accursed castle, yet stir not when the heel is lifted up against him!†   (source)
  • Nicholas distended his stomach with a bowl of porridge, for much the same reason which induces some savages to swallow earth—lest they should be inconveniently hungry when there is nothing to eat.†   (source)
  • The quick eye of the Tuscarora instantly caught a sight of the smoke; and for full a minute he stood, slightly raised on tiptoe, with distended nostrils, like the buck that scents a taint in the air, and a gaze as riveted as that of the trained pointer while he waits his master's aim.†   (source)
  • When the panther lighted on the shoulders of the mastiff, which was its constant aim, old Brave, though torn with her talons, and stained with his own blood, that already flowed from a dozen wounds, would shake off his furious foe like a feather, and, rearing on his hind-legs, rush to the fray again, with jaws distended, and a dauntless eye.†   (source)
  • Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admitted by his better half into any greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed, listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended eyes: which he directed towards his wife and Monks, by turns, in undisguised astonishment; increased, if possible, when the latter sternly demanded, what sum was required for the disclosure.†   (source)
  • It will appear perhaps an observation somewhat over-curious, but this wood would have every characteristic of Spanish oak, if Spanish oak were distended by any unnatural means.†   (source)
  • His eyes opened with that anxious, distended gaze which is apt to accompany the passage of a soul surprised by death, and he seemed disposed to speak.†   (source)
  • In the twilight of the workshop the white dust was flying from his tools like a shower of sparks under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the two wheels were turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his nostrils distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace occupations, which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and satisfy by a realisation of that beyond which such minds have not a dream.†   (source)
  • His round, bullet head, large, light-gray eyes, with their shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth was distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely large, hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and garnished with long nails, in a very foul condition.†   (source)
  • Lashed round and round to the fish's back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in which, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of the lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his sable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old Ahab.†   (source)
  • specimens of other genera, blowfish resembling a dark brown egg, furrowed with white bands, and lacking tails; globefish, genuine porcupines of the sea, armed with stings and able to inflate themselves until they look like a pin cushion bristling with needles; seahorses common to every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts and highly distended pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; spatula-shaped paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish with long jaws, excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with wrinkled heads; myriads o†   (source)
  • Hence then the volcano would distend and lift up the crust, and then burst through a crater suddenly formed at the summit or thinnest part of the volcano.†   (source)
  • Many of them foamed at the mouth, their breathing being quick and short, whilst the bodies of all were fearfully distended.†   (source)
  • In the mean-while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake—if the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there—who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention.†   (source)
  • The fact is, that during the course of his lectures at the Johannaeum, the Professor often came to a complete standstill; he fought with wilful words that refused to pass his struggling lips, such words as resist and distend the cheeks, and at last break out into the unasked-for shape of a round and most unscientific oath: then his fury would gradually abate.†   (source)
  • and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake; and then the howl goes round again and again, until the sun disperses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and pausing for a reply.†   (source)
  • 'This scientific fact has been known for many years; the Greenlanders make constant use of it; when they have killed a seal or walrus they distend the skin that they may tow the animal more easily ashore, and then remove its hide at a moment's notice.'†   (source)
  • In approaching the door, his toe kicked something which felt and sounded soft, leathery, and distended, like a boxing-glove.†   (source)
  • Between his ribs and on each side of his spine he is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth of vermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are completely distended with oxygenated blood.†   (source)
  • 'Stern all!' exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the distended jaws of a large Sperm Whale close to the head of the boat, threatening it with instant destruction;—'Stern all, for your lives!'†   (source)
  • Eugene feasted from a high chair by his father's side, filled his distending belly until it was drum-tight, and was permitted to stop eating by his watchful sire only when his stomach was impregnable to the heavy prod of Gant's big finger.†   (source)
  • His ears were distending with a terrific thunder.†   (source)
  • Carrie looked at him a moment, her eyes distending.†   (source)
  • It has disappeared; the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and retreat, a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back, distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes.†   (source)
  • The door was hurriedly burst open again, and in came running Cainy Ball out of breath, his mouth red and open, like the bell of a penny trumpet, from which he coughed with noisy vigour and great distension of face.†   (source)
  • In the mean-while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake—if the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there—who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention.†   (source)
  • out of the water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope; considering the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and contraction.†   (source)
  • But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope; considering the uniqu†   (source)
  • She drew in her breath sharply then, and put both hands on her distended abdomen.†   (source)
  • VIRAG: (His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the the known... BLOOM: I am going to scream.†   (source)
  • But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word.†   (source)
  • rumbling, grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of Thomond, from the M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun.†   (source)
  • This face is an epilepsy, its wordless tongue gives out the unearthly cry,
    Its veins down the neck distend, its eyes roll till they show
    nothing but their whites,
    Its teeth grit, the palms of the hands are cut by the turn'd-in nails,
    The man falls struggling and foaming to the ground, while he
    speculates well.†   (source)
  • But say, what mean those coloured streaks in Heaven
    Distended, as the brow of God appeased?†   (source)
  • So roams the nightly wolf about the fold: Wet with descending show'rs, and stiff with cold, He howls for hunger, and he grins for pain, (His gnashing teeth are exercis'd in vain,) And, impotent of anger, finds no way In his distended paws to grasp the prey.†   (source)
  • And now the fatal news by Fame is blown Thro' the short circuit of th' Arcadian town, Of Pallas slain —by Fame, which just before His triumphs on distended pinions bore.†   (source)
  • As, compass'd with a wood of spears around, The lordly lion still maintains his ground; Grins horrible, retires, and turns again; Threats his distended paws, and shakes his mane; He loses while in vain he presses on, Nor will his courage let him dare to run: So Turnus fares, and, unresolved of flight, Moves tardy back, and just recedes from fight.†   (source)
  • And now his heart
    Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength,
    Glories: for never, since created Man,
    Met such embodied force as, named with these,
    Could merit more than that small infantry
    Warred on by cranes—though all the giant brood
    Of Phlegra with th' heroic race were joined
    That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side
    Mixed with auxiliar gods; and what resounds
    In fable or romance of Uther's son,
    Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
    And all who since, baptized or infidel,
    Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban,
    Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond,
    Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore
    When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
    By Fontarabbia.†   (source)
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