Other forms: distorted, distorting, distorts
To distort is to twist something out of its true shape or meaning. Distort the facts, a distorted image, distort the sound.
The twisting is the whole word: a distortion keeps the thing recognisable while making it wrong, which is what makes it more useful to a liar than an outright invention. In sound, distortion is deliberate in electric guitar and a fault everywhere else. Note that the Latin means to twist apart, from torquere.
1verbdistortTo twist something out of its true shape or meaning.
“The newspaper distorted his words to make him look foolish.”
distort is a twisting.
Latin distorquere is dis plus torquere, to twist. Torture, torque and contort come from the same twisting.
Proto-Indo-European
*terkʷ-
Latin
distortum
English, today
distort
Built from
Borrowed from Latin distortum, past participle of distorqueō (“to twist, torture, distort”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA