distend

Instead, random bits of the Peep chick — its flat base, the curved neck, the tail — distend until they look like bubbles about to burst.

From Salon ● Feb. 2, 2023

Its body seemed to distend, its muscles to melt.

From The New Yorker ● Feb. 11, 2019

Like dispatches from another dimension, Katz’s drawings distend the ordinary geometry of the comics page, much as desire contorts the imagination.

From Slate ● Mar. 30, 2018

Does the league really want to so distend its compensation scale for any commissioner, much less this one?

From Washington Post ● Nov. 14, 2017

The face of Etienne’s watch appears to distend.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr

What might have been a crisp and moody entertainment, in Graham Greene’s elevated sense of that word, distends.

From New York Times ● Jan. 5, 2023

In contrast, food that distends the stomach initiates short reflexes that cause cells in the stomach wall to increase their secretion of digestive juices.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 19, 2013

Within an hour of lunch, the stomach distends to the point where pants need to be unbuttoned, and it remains this way for the rest of the day.

From US News ● Nov. 21, 2012

An analogy often invoked across Afghanistan is that of the water-filled bag: squeeze the bottom, the top distends.

From New York Times ● Feb. 1, 2012

Leather-like but feather-light— It drapes and folds and distends to perfection.

From Something Else Again by Franklin P. (Franklin Pierce) Adams

Yet had Beijing followed through on the financial liberalization envisioned in the WTO agreement, the housing market might not have grown so distended or the balance sheets of local governments so precarious.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 12, 2026

To actually feel intoxicated, a chimp would need to eat so much fruit that its stomach would become painfully distended.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 1, 2025

Onyeaka wondered if that abundance could be harnessed to feed people in conflict zones where children were suffering from malnutrition, their distended stomachs a clear sign of protein deficiency.

From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2025

The first two were great fun, and apparently being subsumed into the distended viscera of the MCU won’t stop “Deadpool and Wolverine” or whatever from being R-rated fun.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2024

The enormous distended udders of dairy cattle are the result of a human interest in milk and cheese.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

Songs like “No Good Deed” and “March of the Witch Hunters” are chopped up and rearranged to allow for more dialogue and less emoting, distending the film into a bloated heap.

From Salon ● Nov. 21, 2025

I think what we are going for is condensing stage time, while distending mythic time … if that makes ANY sense!

From New York Times ● Nov. 22, 2021

It’s a reminder that our smallness is sometimes petty, the unwelcome gravity of others’ suffering distending her grief.

From Slate ● Jun. 9, 2016

Maintaining vascular tone within the veins prevents the veins from merely distending, dampening the flow of blood, and as you will see, vasoconstriction actually enhances the flow.

From Textbooks ● Jun. 19, 2013

It is misleading to describe the expansion of the universe as a sort of distending bubble viewed from the outside.

From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan