different between widen vs distend

English

Etymology

From wide +? -en (verbal suffix).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?wa?d?n/
• Rhymes: -a?d?n

Verb

widen (third-person singular simple present widens, present participle widening, simple past and past participle widened)

1. (intransitive) To become wide or wider.

2. (transitive) To make wide or wider.
3. (transitive) To let out clothes to a larger size.

4. (transitive) To broaden or extend in scope or range.

5. (transitive, programming) To convert to a data type that can hold a larger number of distinct values.

   Antonym: narrow

   to widen a short variable to an int variable

Derived terms

• widenable

Translations

Anagrams

• Edwin, Wendi, dwine, indew, winde, wined

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