distortion

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act or an instance of distorting.
• noun The condition of being distorted.
• noun A statement that twists fact; a misrepresentation.
• noun The alteration of the original form of a signal representing an image, a sound, a waveform, or other information.
• noun A visible or audible effect of such an alteration, such as the warping of an image or noise in an audio recording.
• noun Psychology The modification of unconscious impulses into forms acceptable by conscious or dreaming perception.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of distorting.
• noun In mathematics, any change of shape not involving a breach of continuity. But a mere alteration of size in the same ratio in all directions is not considered to be a distortion.
• noun A twisting or writhing motion: as, the facial distortions of a sufferer.
• noun The state of being twisted out of shape; a deviation from the natural or regular shape or position; an unnatural direction of parts, from whatever cause.
• noun A perversion of the true meaning or intent.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of distorting, or twisting out of natural or regular shape; a twisting or writhing motion.
• noun A wresting from the true meaning.
• noun The state of being distorted, or twisted out of shape or out of true position; crookedness; perversion.
• noun (Med.) An unnatural deviation of shape or position of any part of the body producing visible deformity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An act of distorting.
• noun A result of distorting.
• noun A misrepresentation of the truth.
• noun Noise or other artifacts caused in the electronic reproduction of sound or music.
• noun An effect used in music, most commonly on guitars in rock or metal.
• noun optics an aberration that causes magnification to change over the field of view.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun an optical phenomenon resulting from the failure of a lens or mirror to produce a good image
• noun a shape resulting from distortion
• noun a change for the worse
• noun the mistake of misrepresenting the facts
• noun 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)
• noun the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean