How to Use distend in a Sentence
distend
verb-
The fear grew when her 1-year-old boy's belly started to distend and his ribs were pressed against his skin.
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Brad Schmitt,
Nashville Tennessean,
19 Oct. 2025
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His abdomen became very hard and distended.
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Ryan Brennan,
Miami Herald,
21 Apr. 2026
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My stomach wasn't distended anymore.
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Deirdre Bardolf,
FOXNews.com,
19 Feb. 2026
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In the last 20 days, their belly will appear distended, and their nipples and breast tissue will be noticeably swollen.
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Maria Azzurra Volpe,
MSNBC Newsweek,
17 Nov. 2025
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His abdomen became distended, and his behavior changed — enough to concern caregivers.
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Ryan Brennan,
Kansas City Star,
21 Apr. 2026
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Fiber slows gastric emptying, making the stomach more distended.
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Amy Brownstein,
Verywell Health,
27 May 2026
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Their belly will appear distended during the last 20 days of pregnancy, and their breast tissue will also be noticeably swollen.
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Maria Azzurra Volpe,
MSNBC Newsweek,
30 Oct. 2025
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In his songs, the English language turned woolier and more expressionistic; musical space-time distended and stretched.
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New York Times,
28 Apr. 2026
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According to a July 2025 update, Elliot’s abdomen was very hard and distended.
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Ryan Brennan,
Charlotte Observer,
21 Apr. 2026
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The fragile skeleton of her ego threatened to snap under the pressure of the animal forces that pressed down on her consciousness, her narrative mind sagging and distended beneath pitiless and grandiose feeling.
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Mary Ann Grossmann,
Twin Cities,
11 Jan. 2026
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Boxing scenes in movies, other than in a handful of classics, tend to start to look all the same, a mishmash of beads of sweat and blood and jowels distended, all fists flying and battering as two men catapult and careen across the ring.
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Ryan Lattanzio,
IndieWire,
19 Mar. 2026
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Far more gut-wrenching were the toddlers with bellies distended from worms or malnutrition, the young adults with legs bent at odd angles caused by preventable polio, or the elderly fated never to set foot off an island in the Atlantic 34 miles long and 18 miles wide.
—
Jill Tucker,
San Francisco Chronicle,
16 July 2025
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'distend.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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