different between amplify vs distend

English

Etymology

From Middle English amplifiyen, from Old French amplifier, from Latin amplificare (“to enlarge”), from amplus (“large”) + facere (“to make”). See ample , equivalent to ample +? -ify.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?æmp.l?.fa?/
• Hyphenation: am?pli?fy

Verb

amplify (third-person singular simple present amplifies, present participle amplifying, simple past and past participle amplified)

1. (transitive) To render larger, more extended, or more intense.

2. (transitive, rhetorical) To enlarge by addition or commenting; to treat copiously by adding particulars, illustrations, etc.; to expand.
3. (transitive) To increase the amplitude of something, especially of an electric current.

4. (translation studies) To add content that is not present in the source text to the target text, usually to improve the fluency of the translation.

Related terms

Translations

Further reading

• amplify in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• amplify in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d??st?nd/
• Rhymes: -?nd

Verb

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
   • 1975', Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift [Avon ed., 1976, p. 147]:

     I begin to hate the theater, the feeling wickedly distended by histrionics, all the old gestures, clutchings, tears, and applications.

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):

     I begin to hate the theater, the feeling wickedly distended by histrionics, all my 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.
3. (transitive) To cause to swell.
4. (biology) To cause gravidity.

Derived terms

• distensible

Translations

References

• John A. Simpson and Edward S. C. Weiner, editors (1989) , “distend”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, ?ISBN

Anagrams

• destin'd

French

Verb

distend

1. third-person singular present indicative of distendre