strain

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See also străin

Contents

English [edit]

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Pronunciation [edit]

Etymology 1 [edit]

Old English strēon, ġestrēon, from Germanic, from Proto-Indo-European *streu ( cognate with Latin strues (“heap”))

Noun [edit]

strain (plural strains)

  1. (obsolete) Treasure.
  2. (obsolete) The blood-vessel in the yolk of an egg.
  3. (archaic) Race; lineage, pedigree.
  4. Hereditary character, quality, or disposition.
    There is a strain of madness in her family.
  5. A tendency or disposition
  6. (literary) Any sustained note or movement; a song; a distinct portion of an ode or other poem; also, the pervading note, or burden, of a song, poem, oration, book, etc.; theme; motive; manner; style
  7. (biology) A particular breed or race of animal, microbe etc.
    They say this year's flu virus is a particularly virulent strain.
  8. (music) A portion of music divided off by a double bar; a complete musical period or sentence; a movement, or any rounded subdivision of a movement.
  9. (rare) A kind or sort (of person etc.).
Quotations [edit]
Translations [edit]
Race; stock; generation; descent; family
Hereditary character, quality, or disposition
variant of living species
Rank; a sort
Related terms [edit]

Etymology 2 [edit]

Old French estreindre ( > French étreindre (“to grip”)), from Latin stringere (“to draw tight together, to tie”).

Verb [edit]

strain (third-person singular simple present strains, present participle straining, simple past and past participle strained)

  1. (obsolete) To hold tightly, to clasp.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, III.ii:
      So hauing said, her twixt her armes twaine / She straightly straynd, and colled tenderly [...].
  2. To apply a force or forces to by stretching out.
    Relations between the United States and Guatemala traditionally have been close, although at times strained by human rights and civil/military issues.
  3. To exert or struggle (to do something), especially to stretch (one's senses, faculties etc.) beyond what is normal or comfortable.
    Sitting in back, I strained to hear the speaker.
    • 1898, J. Meade Falkner, Moonfleet Chapter 4
      Thus my plight was evil indeed, for I had nothing now to burn to give me light, and knew that 'twas no use setting to grout till I could see to go about it. Moreover, the darkness was of that black kind that is never found beneath the open sky, no, not even on the darkest night, but lurks in close and covered places and strains the eyes in trying to see into it.
  4. To tighten (the strings of a musical instrument); to uplift (one’s voice).
  5. To separate solid from liquid by passing through a strainer or colander
Translations [edit]
to stretch too far
to apply a force
to tighten the strings
to separate

Noun [edit]

strain (countable and uncountable; plural strains)

  1. The act of straining, or the state of being strained.
  2. A violent effort; an excessive and hurtful exertion or tension, as of the muscles.
    He lifted the weight with a strain
    the strain upon the sailboat's rigging
  3. An injury resulting from violent effort; a sprain.
    • 2011 April 11, Phil McNulty, “Liverpool 3 - 0 Man City”, BBC Sport:
      Dirk Kuyt sandwiched a goal in between Carroll's double as City endured a night of total misery, with captain Carlos Tevez limping off early on with a hamstring strain that puts a serious question mark over his participation in Saturday's FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United at Wembley.
  4. (uncountable) (engineering) A dimensionless measure of object deformation either referring to engineering strain or true strain.
  5. (obsolete) The track of a deer.
    • 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, in Kupperman 1988, p. 145:
      When they have shot a Deere by land, they follow him like bloud-hounds by the bloud, and straine, and oftentimes so take them.

Anagrams [edit]

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