'distend' is a correct and usable word in written English.
It means to swell or expand, typically due to pressure from within. You can use 'distend' in a sentence to describe the bloating of a person's stomach after a large meal: "His stomach began to distend after he finished the massive Thanksgiving feast."
The abdomens of those with kwashiorkor, however, distend in a way that is distressingly familiar from televised appeals for famine relief.
Clearly, it imposes some costs; clearly, some policies distend the process artificially.
In the process, they rapidly expand to 30 times their original volume, forcing the abdomen to distend and allowing the resulting foam to access all the nooks and crannies of the abdominal cavity.
Such ovaries distend the body wall when mature; following spawning, the ovaries shrink rapidly to inconspicuous bodies consisting mainly of oogonia, immature oocytes, and a few stromal cells.
As they return to the surface, bodily gases begin to expand, and the intestines may distend.
Swallowed air or gases formed by the breakdown of food products, if not expelled by belching or through the anus, will distend the intestines.
Aid donors shake their heads at the sight of slightly glassy-eyed Yemeni men whiling away each afternoon, their cheeks distended with tennis-ball-sized gobs of masticated leaves.
Spreads between these distended borrowing costs and those on German bunds have widened to more than 4%; a year ago they were around 1%.Portugal is vulnerable not because it is an identikit version of either Greece or Ireland, but because it shares some of the symptoms of both those afflicted economies.
But anyone in the know would have been unlikely to bet against The Tsunami.After the contest, his belly grossly distended, Mr Kobayashi was asked what next.
She breathes rapidly, her belly sticking out from a dirty T-shirt, distended by hunger.
Their hair is yellowing, their bellies are distended and their expressions glazed.
