Essential Word Roots: Twists and Turns: Tor

She tried to smile, but the pain contorted her expression into a grimace. Schooled

And isn’t that contorted steel tube that the New York artist Wade Guyton twisted up into the air the remnant of the iconic 1920s Breuer chair? New York Times (Jun 28, 2018)

In contortions that are reminiscent of DC’s Plastic Man or Marvel’s “Mr. Fantastic” Reed Richards, cells change from slightly irregular borders to smoothly rounded ones. Scientific American (Aug 3, 2018)

The Flying Fins, a grinning muscular threesome, perform flips using a seesaw; the Cycling Cylone rides a bicycle in positions you can’t imagine; and a sideshow features a contortionist called the Elastic Dislocationist. Los Angeles Times (Feb 17, 2017)

Polish artist Weronika Gęsicka’s work subverts the image of perfect family life in 1950s America by distorting and manipulating stock images. The Guardian (Apr 25, 2019)

“Why, what’s wrong with it?” said Harry, grabbing a spoon and squinting at his distorted reflection. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The more I learned about these distortions and elisions, the more important I thought it was to assemble a fuller, more honest account of Taylor’s life. Slate (May 13, 2019)

The police officers extorted 20,000 pesos from the family to set them free. Enrique's Journey

Now, a wealthy Czech investor is suing the company and alleging extortion, saying it was hired to force him to pay $23 million to an Eastern European nemesis. Los Angeles Times (Oct 22, 2018)

A church treasurer said she was shocked by the extortionate cost of her mother's funeral - and immediately saved hundreds of pounds by searching for a better price. BBC (Nov 29, 2018)

“Then we’re not at liberty to say what happened to them,” Bobby Gene retorted. The Season of Styx Malone

“We concluded that the Milky Way’s warped spiral pattern is most likely caused by ‘torques’ – or rotational forcing – by the massive inner disk,” says Liu Chao, senior researcher and co-author of the paper. Fox News (Feb 6, 2019)

The torsion on the clamp snapped the strong composite like a brittle twig. The Martian

In civil cases, like contracts or torts, there are statutes of limitations for a plaintiff to start a lawsuit. Slate (Dec 11, 2018)

“They want to see this resolved,” Mrs. May told Parliament, referring to the tortuous, tedious, yet momentous task of withdrawing from the European Union, a process known as Brexit. New York Times (Mar 8, 2019)

Pax trained his nose to the humans’ camp, which, as always, tortured him with its rich food scents. Pax

Over the next eleven months, he was transferred from one Moscow prison to another, held in increasingly foul and torturous conditions. The New Yorker (Aug 13, 2018)