STRAIN, verb transitive [Latin This word retains its original signification, to stretch.]

1. To stretch; to draw with force; to extend with great effort; as, to strain a rope; to strain the shrouds of a ship; to strain the chords of an instrument.

2. To cause to draw with force, or with excess of exertion; to injure by pressing with too much effort. He strained this horses or his oxen by overloading them.

3. To stretch violently or by violent exertion; as, to strain the arm or the muscles.

4. To put to the utmost strength. Men in desperate cases will strain themselves for relief.

5. To press or cause to pass through some porous substance; to purify or separate from extraneous matter by filtration; to filter; as, to strain milk. Water may be stained through sand.

6. To sprain; to injure by drawing or stretching.

Prudes decayd about may tack, strain their necks with looking back.

7. To make tighter; to cause to bind closer.

To strain his fetters with a stricter care.

8. To force; to constrain; to make uneasy or unnatural.

His mirth is forced and strained.

STRAIN, verb intransitive

1. To make violent efforts.

To build his fortune I will strain a little.

STRAINing with too weak a wing.

2. To be filtered. Water straining through sand becomes pure.

STRAIN, noun

1. A violent effort; a stretching or exertion of the limbs or muscles, or of any thing else.

2. An injury by excessive exertion, drawing or stretching.

3. Style; continued manner of speaking or writing; as the genius and strain of the book of Proverbs. So we say, poetic strains, lofty strains.

4. Song; note; sound; or a particular part of a tune.

Their heavenly harps a lower strain began.

5. Turn; tendency; inborn disposition.

Because heretics have a strain of madness, he applied her with some corporal chastisements.

6. Manner of speech or action.

Such take too high a strain at first.

7. Race; generation; descent.

He is of a noble strain [Not in use.]

8. Hereditary disposition.

Intemperance and lust breed diseases, which propagated, spoil the strain of a nation. [Not in use.]

9. Rank; character. [Not in use.]