Adjacent Words

Distortion definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

DISTORTION, n. [L.]
1. The act of distorting or wresting; a twisting out of regular shape; a twisting or writhing motion; as the distortions of the face or body.
2. The state of being twisted out of shape; deviation from natural shape or position; crookedness; grimace.
3. A perversion of the true meaning of words.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: a change for the worse [syn: distortion, deformation]
2: a shape resulting from distortion [syn: distorted shape, distortion]
3: an optical phenomenon resulting from the failure of a lens or mirror to produce a good image [syn: aberration, distortion, optical aberration]
4: a change (usually undesired) in the waveform of an acoustic or analog electrical signal; the difference between two measurements of a signal (as between the input and output signal); "heavy metal guitar players use vacuum tube amplifiers to produce extreme distortion"
5: the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean [syn: distortion, overrefinement, straining, torture, twisting]
6: the mistake of misrepresenting the facts

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 1581 1. the act of distorting 2. the quality or state of being distorted ; a product of distorting: as a. a lack of proportionality in an image resulting from defects in the optical system b. falsified reproduction of an audio or video signal caused by change in the wave form of the original signal • distortional adjective

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 the act or an instance of distorting; the process of being distorted. 2 Electronics a change in the form of a signal during transmission etc. usu. with some impairment of quality. Derivatives: distortional adj. distortionless adj. Etymology: L distortio (as DISTORT)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Distortion Dis*tor"tion, n. [L. distortio: cf. F. distortion.] 1. The act of distorting, or twisting out of natural or regular shape; a twisting or writhing motion; as, the distortions of the face or body. 2. A wresting from the true meaning. --Bp. Wren. 3. The state of being distorted, or twisted out of shape or out of true position; crookedness; perversion. 4. (Med.) An unnatural deviation of shape or position of any part of the body producing visible deformity.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(distortions) 1. Distortion is the changing of something into something that is not true or not acceptable. I think it would be a gross distortion of reality to say that they were motivated by self-interest... N-VAR: usu with supp [disapproval] 2. Distortion is the changing of the appearance or sound of something in a way that makes it seem strange or unclear. Audio signals can be transmitted along cables without distortion. N-VAR

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Twist, wryness, deformity. 2. Perversion, misrepresentation, falsification, wresting.

Moby Thesaurus

aberrancy, aberration, abstractionism, abuse of terms, anamorphosis, apparent soundness, bad likeness, birdies, birthmark, blackhead, bleb, blemish, blister, blooping, blurping, botch, bulla, burlesque, caricature, casuistry, catachresis, check, cicatrix, circularity, coloring, comedo, confabulation, contorting, crack, crater, craze, daub, defacement, defect, defectiveness, deflection, deflexure, deformation, deformity, delusion, deviancy, diffraction, diffusion, disfiguration, disfigurement, disingenuousness, dispersion, eisegesis, equivocalness, equivocation, errancy, erroneousness, error, evasive reasoning, exaggeration, expressionism, fallaciousness, fallacy, false coloring, false swearing, falseness, falsification, falsifying, falsity, fault, faultiness, feedback, flaw, flawedness, flection, flexure, flutter, fluttering, freckle, garbling, gloss, hamartia, hemangioma, heresy, heterodoxy, hickey, hissing, howling, hum, hyperbole, illusion, inaccuracy, injustice, insincerity, jesuitism, jesuitry, keloid, kink, lentigo, litotes, malconformation, malentendu, malformation, malobservation, milium, misapplication, misapprehension, miscitation, miscoloring, misconception, misconstruction, misdoing, misdrawing, misexplanation, misexplication, misexposition, misfeasance, misintelligence, misinterpretation, misjudgment, mispainting, misquotation, misreading, misrendering, misreport, misrepresentation, misshape, misstatement, misteaching, mistranslation, misunderstanding, misuse of words, mole, motorboating, mystification, needle scar, nevus, nonrealism, obfuscation, obscurantism, overdrawing, overstatement, oversubtlety, parody, peccancy, perjury, perversion, philosophism, pimple, pit, plausibility, plausibleness, pock, pockmark, port-wine mark, port-wine stain, prevarication, pustule, rationalization, refraction, rift, rumble, scab, scar, scatter, scratch, scratching, scribble, sebaceous cyst, self-contradiction, shredding, sin, sinfulness, skewness, slanting, sophism, sophistical reasoning, sophistication, sophistry, special pleading, speciosity, specious reasoning, speciousness, split, squeals, squeezing, static, straining, strawberry mark, sty, subtlety, torsion, torturing, track, travesty, twist, twisting, understatement, unorthodoxy, untrueness, untruth, untruthfulness, verruca, vesicle, vicious circle, vicious reasoning, wale, warp, wart, weal, welt, wen, whistles, whitehead, woomping, wow, wowwows, wrenching, wrong, wrongness