English

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin distortum, past participle of distorqueō (to twist, torture, distort).

Pronunciation

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Verb

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distort (third-person singular simple present distorts, present participle distorting, simple past and past participle distorted)

  1. (transitive) To bring something out of shape, to misshape.
    • 1902, Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome:
      This she did with the utmost politeness, though cold by race, and through her politeness ran a sense of what the Teutons call Duty, which would once have repelled me; but I have wandered over a great part of the world and I know it now to be a distorted kind of virtue.
  2. (intransitive, ergative) To become misshapen.
  3. (transitive) To give a false or misleading account of
    In their articles, journalists sometimes distort the truth.

Synonyms

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  • (to bring something out of shape): deform

Derived terms

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Translations

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Adjective

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distort (comparative more distort, superlative most distort)

  1. (obsolete) Distorted; misshapen.