distortion

Everyday

1. Distortion is when the shape, sound or picture of something is twisted or stretched so it looks or sounds wrong. tree →
2. A distortion of the truth or facts is a version that changes them so they give a false idea. tree →
3. In music, distortion is a rough, buzzing sound effect used on electric guitars. tree →

In the lessons

In science: lenses, curved mirrors and water cause distortion of light (a funhouse mirror, a straw looking bent). In media and politics lessons: a distortion of facts is a warning sign of propaganda or misleading charts. Phrases: a distortion of the truth, sound distortion, image distortion.

Examples

• The funhouse mirror caused a funny distortion of our faces. tree →
• The water made a distortion so the pencil looked bent. tree →
• The loud speaker gave the music a crackly distortion. tree →
• Saying I broke it on purpose is a distortion of what happened. tree →
• A graph that does not start at zero can create a distortion. tree →
• The guitarist turned on the distortion pedal. tree →
• Heat over the road made a wobbly distortion in the air. tree →

Note

Countable for single cases (a distortion of the facts) and uncountable for the effect (too much distortion). A distortion is not the same as a lie: it can bend true facts. In maths charts, a stretched or cut axis is a classic distortion — read the numbers, not the bar heights.

In Jewish tradition

In science: lenses, curved mirrors and water cause distortion of light (a funhouse mirror, a straw looking bent). In media and politics lessons: a distortion of facts is a warning sign of propaganda or misleading charts. Phrases: a distortion of the truth, sound distortion, image distortion.

Examples

• All the other commentaries mentioned above, together with all quotations of other expounders of the same book, contain nothing but a medley of arbitrary, mystical explanations and sophistical distortions of scriptural verses, astrological notions, oriental (Sefer Yetzirah, Kalisch 1877) tree →

Note

Countable for single cases (a distortion of the facts) and uncountable for the effect (too much distortion). A distortion is not the same as a lie: it can bend true facts. In maths charts, a stretched or cut axis is a classic distortion — read the numbers, not the bar heights.