different between distend vs expatiate

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 the participle stem of Latin expatior, from ex- + spatior (“walk about”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k?spe???e?t/, /?k?spe???e?t/

Verb

expatiate (third-person singular simple present expatiates, present participle expatiating, simple past and past participle expatiated)

1. To write or speak at length; to be copious in argument or discussion.

   Synonyms: descant, dilate, enlarge, expound
2. (rare) To range at large, or without restraint.
3. (obsolete) To expand; to spread; to extend; to diffuse; to broaden.

Translations