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To extend in some one direction; to lengthen out; to stretch. [R.] But say, what mean those colored streaks in heaven Distended as the brow of God appeased Milton.

The act of distending; the act of stretching in breadth or in all directions; the state of being Distended; as, the distention of the lungs.

vest one of his rights or privileges; to divest one's self of prejudices, passions, etc. Wretches divested of every moral feeling. Goldsmith. The tendency of the language to divest itself of its gutturals. Earle.

A mean, worthless fellow; a wretch. What is thy servant, which is but a dog, that he should do this great thing 2 Kings viii. 13 (Rev. Ver. )

To extend in length; to lengthen; to protract; to stretch; to extend, as a mass of metal into wire. How long her face is drawn! Shak. And the huge Offa's dike which he drew from the mouth of Wye to that of Dee. J. R. Green.

The process of stretching or spreading metals as by hammering, or, as in forming wire from rods or tubes and cups from sheet metal, by pulling them through dies.

Sorrow; wretchedness. [Obs.]

rument of percussion, consisting either of a hollow cylinder, over each end of which is stretched a piece of skin or vellum, to be beaten with a stick; or of a metallic hemisphere (kettledrum) with a single piece of skin to be so beaten; the common instrument for marking time in martial music; one of the pair of tympan…

The parchment or skin stretched over one end of a drum.

An instrument, having stretched metallic wires which are beaten with two light hammers held in the hands of the performer.

b junkets eat. Milton. The island princes overbold Have eat our substance. Tennyson. His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages. Thackeray.

other gases and vapors. -- Elastic limit (Mech.), the limit of distortion, by bending, stretching, etc., that a body can undergo and yet return to its original form when relieved from stress; also, the unit force or stress required to produce this distortion. Within the elastic limit the distortion is directly proport…

mple room for motion or action; free scope. "My soul hath elbowroom." Shak. Then came a stretch of grass and a little more elbowroom. W. G. Norris.

Sorrowful; wretched; full of trouble. [Obs.] Chaucer.

To lengthen; to extend; to stretch; as, to elongate a line.

State of being stretched to stiffness; tension.

Destitute of animation; spiritless; disheartened. [R.] "Pale . . . wretch, exanimate by love." Thomson.

Deserving to be execrated; accursed; damnable; detestable; abominable; as, an execrable wretch. "Execrable pride." Hooker. -- Ex"e*cra*ble*ness, n. -- Ex"e*cra*bly, adv.

Anything which causes expansion esp. (Mech.) a tool for stretching open or expanding a tube, etc.

er, or ridicule; to expose an army to destruction or defeat. Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel. Shak.