bend

Social media and shortform video have pushed everything from music to documentaries into a race to truncate their lengths and make everything bite-size, in order to bend to the current of algorithm-centric audiences.

From Slate ● Sep. 26, 2026

Cheng and her supporters say she has no plans to bend to Beijing and simply wants to promote better relations.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 22, 2026

"My father didn't attend and said he would never bend the knee to anyone. I guess that rubbed off on me," he said.

From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2026

The tool required farmworkers to bend down over rows of crops given its short length, a task they often had to do for hours.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2026

“The assumption with the large earthquake,” Malone explained, “is that it’s a fracture of the rock … Like if you bend a stick and it breaks, you hear a pop— that’s the earthquake!”

From "Mountain of Fire" by Rebecca E. F. Barone

There is the ritual, the way a whole week bends toward the game and then releases.

From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2026

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026

To do it, Markovic’s team will look at how dark matter bends the light of hundreds of millions of galaxies to create maps of its structure.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 28, 2026

If a CEO bends the rules, he added, “that sends a devastating message to the people inside the organization because it shows that, well, if he can do that, I can do that.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026

He bends down to retrieve it, and when he straightens and offers it to her, she seems surprised to see that he is smiling at her.

From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern

Emhoff subsequently made known his unhappiness with the firm’s capitulation, though he’s stopped short of quitting — as some have urged — to protest its bended knee.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2025

"If I was Prime Minister, I would be coming along on my bended knees and asking to be allowed back in," he says.

From BBC ● Jan. 29, 2025

Me on bended knee, with a ring I'd emptied my bank account to buy.

From Salon ● Jun. 20, 2022

As Lasso, Romney approaches Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — herself dressed as the club’s owner, Rebecca Welton — on bended knee.

From New York Times ● Nov. 17, 2021

After ’while, all the grapes that got smashed on Jimmy’s forehead started leaking down into his eyes so he bended over to wipe at ’em.

From "Elijah of Buxton" by Christopher Paul Curtis

The Tiangong Omni swivels its torso wildly from side to side while waving its bent arms in front of its face.

From Slate ● Sep. 27, 2026

I stood like that, bent at the waist, for what felt like hours.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026

Nasa is flying the X-59 in conjunction with community surveys to assess what people think when a supersonic boom is bent by the planes stretched nose and hushed up.

From BBC ● Sep. 24, 2026

We can look at the films he’s made before and since, and see it as yet another example of his satirical bent.

From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2026

Before I knew it, the pair of us were clutching each other, bent double as we laughed till tears ran down our cheeks.

From "Code Name Kingfisher" by Liz Kessler

This is what the industry calls "misalignment" - broadly defined as when AI machines do not act in humanity's best interests, such as by bending the rules.

From BBC ● Sep. 24, 2026

She was fun to watch; she had a way of bending conversations where she wanted them to go.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026

Computer simulations helped predict how bending should influence the movement of electrons.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 17, 2026

Even now, Harbaugh made clear he wasn’t bending the rules.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 5, 2026

Angela whispered, bending down to pick up looped coils from the floor of the cave.

From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix