Distort

//dɪˈstɔːt// adj, verb

adj, verb ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To bring something out of shape, to misshape. transitive

    "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. 2
    alter the shape of (something) by stress wordnet
  3. 3
    To become misshapen. ergative, intransitive
  4. 4
    make false by mutilation or addition; as of a message or story wordnet
  5. 5
    To give a false or misleading account of; pervert. transitive

    "In their articles, journalists sometimes distort the truth."

Show 3 more definitions
  1. 6
    affect as in thought or feeling wordnet
  2. 7
    form into a spiral shape wordnet
  3. 8
    twist and press out of shape wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    Distorted; misshapen. obsolete

    "Her face was ugly and her mouth distort."

Synonyms

All synonyms
contortdeformdeformfalsifytwistwarp

Example

More examples

"A true scientist would not distort facts."

Etymology

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

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.