Picture something being twisted out of its true shape: a face in a funhouse mirror, a voice pushed through a broken speaker. It is still there — you can still recognise it — but it has been pulled away from what it really looks or sounds like.
From the word’s history
From Latin distortus, past participle of distorqueō 'to twist away, twist out of shape' — dis- (apart, away) + torqueō (to twist), the same root behind torque and torture.
這個字借自拉丁文 distortum，是動詞 distorqueō 的過去分詞，本義就是「扭開、扭到變形」。它由 dis-（分開、離開）加上 torqueō（扭轉）組成——torqueō 這個「扭」的零件在英文裡留下不少親戚：torque（扭力）、torture（本義是用扭絞的方式施刑）。所以拉丁文的字面畫面「把東西扭離原位」，跟今天 distort 的每個用法都還連得上。
Wiktionary: distort < Latin distortum, pp. of distorqueō (dis- + torqueō)
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原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
distortverb/dɪsˈtɔːt/
- 1
To bring something out of shape, to misshape.
- This she did with the utmost politeness, though cold by race, and through her politeness ran a sense of what the Teutons call Duty, which would once have repelled me; but I have wandered over a great part of the world and I know it now to be a distorted kind of virtue.
- 2
To become misshapen.
- 3
To give a false or misleading account of; pervert.
- In their articles, journalists sometimes distort the truth.
distortadj/dɪsˈtɔːt/
- 1
obsoleteDistorted; misshapen.
- Her face was ugly and her mouth distort.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。