distorting

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of distort.

   The cheap lens was distorting the edges of every photograph.

   Heat rising from the road was distorting the view of the cars ahead.

   Note

   Every use of distort runs through this form. It can bend a shape (distorting the edges) or bend the truth (distorting the evidence), and in its ergative use the thing changes on its own (the frame kept distorting in the heat). It is easy to tell apart from the adjective: the participle takes an object, while the adjective takes degree words, as in more distorting or very distorting.

2. 2
   adjective

   Causing the shape, sound, or appearance of something to change from its true or accurate form.

   Like ripples on a pond that scramble the reflection of the sky above it.

   A distorting haze hung over the valley, bending the outline of the distant peaks.

   The faulty microphone added a distorting buzz to every recording.

   Note

   Beyond lenses and microphones, the adjective has an abstract life in policy and economics, where it describes whatever skews an outcome away from its fair or natural course. A parliamentary committee in 2008 complained of "a very distorting effect on the distributions," and Ross McKitrick writes of "very distorting tax systems." In this use it typically modifies nouns like effect or system. The fairground mirror remains its most concrete image.

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