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To appear above the surface either of sea or land, or to appear enlarged, or distorted and indistinct, as a distant object, a ship at sea, or a mountain, esp. from atmospheric influences; as, the ship looms large; the land looms high. Awful she looms, the terror of the main. H. J. Pye.

ess and paint for a part, as an actor; as, he was well made up. -- To make up a face, to distort the face as an expression of pain or derision. -- To make up one's mind, to reach a mental determination; to resolve. -- To make water. (a) (Naut.) To leak. (b) To urinate. -- To make way, or To make one's way. (a) To m…

, expressed by the ratio of a stress on a given unit of the substance to the accompanying distortion, or strain. (b) An expression of the force (usually in terms of the height in feet or weight in pounds of a column of the same body) which would be necessary to elongate a prismatic body of a transverse section equal to…

se of the bones, in which they lose their earthy material, and become soft, flexible, and distorted. Also called malacia.

ne sick of the palsy." Mark ii. 3. Bell's palsy, paralysis of the facial nerve, producing distortion of one side of the face; -- so called from Sir Charles Bell, an English surgeon who described it. -- Scrivener's palsy. See Writer's cramp, under Writer. -- Shaking palsy, paralysis agitans, a disease usually occurrin…

Distorted. Pot foot, a distorted foot. Sir T. Herbert.

Having a distorted foot, or a clubfoot or clubfeet. B. Jonson.

To twist; to distort; as, to screw his visage. He screwed his face into a hardened smile. Dryden.

The operation for the removal of squinting by the division of such muscles as distort the eyeball.

To wrest from the proper meaning; to distort. Jar. Taylor.

To distort, as a solid body, by turning one part relatively to another about an axis passing through both; to subject to torsion; as, to twist a shaft.

as much as 100º and are useful for photographing at short range, but the pictures appear distorted.

f Tartary. Cf. Tumbleweed. Maunder (Treas. of Bot.) -- Witches' besoms (Bot.), tufted and distorted branches of the silver fir, caused by the attack of some fungus. Maunder (Treas. of Bot.) -- Witches' butter (Bot.), a name of several gelatinous cryptogamous plants, as Nostoc commune, and Exidia glandulosa. See Nostoc.…

To strain; to sprain; hence, to distort; to pervert. You wrenched your foot against a stone. Swift.

rom truth; to twist from its natural or proper use or meaning by violence; to pervert; to distort. Wrest once the law to your authority. Shak. Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor. Ex. xxiii. 6. Their arts of wresting, corrupting, and false interpreting the holy text. South.

To distort; to pervert; to wrest. How dare men thus wring the Scriptures Whitgift.

To twist; to turn; now, usually, to twist or turn so as to distort; to wring. "With writhing [turning] of a pin." Chaucer. Then Satan first knew pain, And writhed him to and fro. Milton. Her mouth she writhed, her forehead taught to frown. Dryden. His battle-writhen arms, and mighty hands. Tennyson.…

Having a twisted distorted from. A writhen staff his step unstable guides. Fairfax.

Turned to one side; twisted; distorted; as, a wry mouth.

A twisted or distorted neck; a deformity in which the neck is drawn to one side by a rigid contraction of one of the muscles of the neck; torticollis.