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say it: di-STAWR-shuhn
distortion is a noun meaning "a change for the worse". It carries 6 recorded senses.
a change for the worse
a shape resulting from distortion
an optical phenomenon resulting from the failure of a lens or mirror to produce a good image
a change (usually undesired) in the waveform of an acoustic or analog electrical signal; the difference between two measurements of a signal (as between the input and output signal)
“heavy metal guitar players use vacuum tube amplifiers to produce extreme distortion”
the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean
the mistake of misrepresenting the facts
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for distortion come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.