different between distend vs dispend

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

English

Etymology

From Old French despendre ( > French dépendre), from Latin dispendere.

Verb

dispend (third-person singular simple present dispends, present participle dispending, simple past and past participle dispended or dispent)

1. (obsolete) To spend or expend.
2. (obsolete) To waste or squander.
3. (obsolete) To distribute or dispense.