distort
Americanverb (used with object)
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to twist awry or out of shape; make crooked or deformed.
Arthritis had distorted his fingers.
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to give a false, perverted, or disproportionate meaning to; misrepresent.
to distort the facts.
- Synonyms:
- misstate, falsify, twist, misconstrue, pervert
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Electronics. to reproduce or amplify (a signal) inaccurately by changing the frequencies or unequally changing the delay or amplitude of the components of the output wave.
verb
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(often passive) to twist or pull out of shape; make bent or misshapen; contort; deform
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to alter or misrepresent (facts, motives, etc)
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electronics to reproduce or amplify (a signal) inaccurately, changing the shape of the waveform
Related Words
See misrepresent.
Other Word Forms
- distorted adjective
- distortedly adverb
- distortedness noun
- distorter noun
- distortive adjective
- nondistorting adjective
- nondistortingly adverb
- nondistortive adjective
- overdistort verb (used with object)
- undistorting adjective
Etymology
Origin of distort
1580–90; from Latin distortus (past participle of distorquēre “to distort”), equivalent to dis- dis- 1 + tor(qu)- (stem of torquēre “to twist”) + -tus past participle suffix
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
People who have Starlinks don’t let it be known and only upload videos to people they trust, he said over his crackling and distorted Starlink connection.
Consequently, the FDIC’s ratio of guaranteed deposits to reserves—a critical indicator of the fund’s ability to protect taxpayers—would be dangerously distorted for 10 years.
The effects of the long shutdown could distort the employment report for at least a few more months — and longstanding problems in collecting the jobs data could re-emerge.
From MarketWatch
Israel dismissed the accusations as "absurd and distorted".
From BBC
"This number paints a distorted picture of how people make decisions about their food intake and how much control they have over it," she says.
From Science Daily
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
