Definition of DEFORM

Choose the Right Synonym for deform

deform, distort, contort, warp means to mar or spoil by or as if by twisting. deform may imply a change of shape through stress, injury, or accident of growth. a face deformed by hatred distort and contort both imply a wrenching from the natural or normal, but contort suggests a more involved twisting and a more grotesque and painful result. the odd camera angle distorts the figure disease had contorted her body warp indicates an uneven shrinking that bends or twists out of a flat plane. warped floorboards

Examples of deform in a Sentence

The disease eventually deforms the bones. The disease eventually causes the bones to deform.

Recent Examples on the Web

For more than a decade, Australian engineers working under the name Rotary Engine Development Agency have developed a new design of rotary engine that is based on a deforming rhombus rather than the conventional triangular rotors. — Matthew Jancer, Popular Mechanics, "The Rhombus Rotary Engine: Can a Quirky New Design Top the Famous Wankel?," 18 Jan. 2019 To keep it simple—I'm no astrophysicist—the theory states that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole, a region in space where the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing can escape its pull. — Ineye Komonibo, Marie Claire, "We Know What a Black Hole Looks Like for the First Time," 10 Apr. 2019 The front and rear deform in a crash to absorb all of the impact, spreading it away from the passenger compartment. — Blake Z. Rong, Popular Mechanics, "10 Innovations That Made the Modern Car," 4 Dec. 2018 But in setting out the purpose of the courts, in Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton argued that judges would also sometimes have to resist popular pressures that might deform the constitutional system. — Yuval Levin, WSJ, "‘Judicial Fortitude’ Review: Time for Congress to Do Its Job," 2 Jan. 2019 The affected cars have canister purge valves that can refuse to close, which in turn could cause enough vacuum within the tank to deform it. — Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, "Ford recalls 1.5 million Focuses for faulty fuel tank purge valves," 25 Oct. 2018 Insofar as individual beliefs are deforming our politics, the beliefs that do so the worst involve bigotry — especially, in the American case, racist sentiment. — Dylan Matthews, Vox, "The “why can’t we all just get along” theory of politics," 3 Dec. 2018 Difficult readability: The bendiness means some of the text is significantly deformed, and so any information it is meant to convey will be more difficult. — Sean Hollister, The Verge, "Science fiction shows why Samsung’s folding phones might thrive," 14 Nov. 2018 Realists can also fail to grasp the power of ideology to shape the behavior of states, often in ways that deform or disregard their own interests. — Bret Stephens, New York Times, "Foreign Policy From the Dark Side," 28 Mar. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'deform.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.