The thick glass of the old window began to distort the view of the garden, bending the straight lines of the fence into gentle curves.
旧窗户的厚玻璃开始扭曲花园的景色，将笔直的栅栏线条弯成柔和的曲线。
Translator Karim Aziz argues that prioritizing rhythm over precise meaning risks distorting the author's original intent in ways that no amount of pleasing sound can justify.
From a Cross-Text Connections question · Craft and Structure
- Ground-based telescopes must look through Earth's atmosphere, which distorts and blurs incoming starlight.
From a Rhetorical Synthesis question · Expression of Ideas
Which choice best defines “distort”?
A — Twist out of shape or meaning. “distort” means twist out of shape or meaning.
Which word means “twist out of shape or meaning”?
C — distort. “distort” means twist out of shape or meaning.
distort — twist out of shape or meaning. In Chinese: 扭曲，歪曲.
distort is pronounced /dɪˈstɔːrt/.
The thick glass of the old window began to distort the view of the garden, bending the straight lines of the fence into gentle curves. (旧窗户的厚玻璃开始扭曲花园的景色，将笔直的栅栏线条弯成柔和的曲线。)
deform, misrepresent, warp — all close in meaning to distort (twist out of shape or meaning).
straighten, clarify — each the opposite of distort (twist out of shape or meaning).
Yes. distort is on the SAT Prep Easy list — mid-frequency academic words that do get tested. The Digital SAT does not test vocabulary in isolation; words like this one are tested through Words in Context questions, where you choose the word that completes a passage most logically and precisely.
dis(away)+tort(twist)