- Strain
- Strain Strain, n.
1. The act of straining, or the state of being strained.
Specifically:
[1913 Webster]
(a) A violent effort; an excessive and hurtful exertion or
tension, as of the muscles; as, he lifted the weight
with a strain; the strain upon a ship's rigging in a
gale; also, the hurt or injury resulting; a sprain.
[1913 Webster]
Whether any poet of our country since Shakespeare has exerted a greater variety of powers with less strain and less ostentation. --Landor. [1913 Webster]
Credit is gained by custom, and seldom recovers a strain. --Sir W. Temple. [1913 Webster] (b) (Mech. Physics) A change of form or dimensions of a solid or liquid mass, produced by a stress. --Rankine. [1913 Webster]
2. (Mus.) 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. [1913 Webster]
Their heavenly harps a lower strain began. --Dryden. [1913 Webster]
3. 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; also, a course of action or conduct; as, he spoke in a noble strain; there was a strain of woe in his story; a strain of trickery appears in his career. ``A strain of gallantry.'' --Sir W. Scott. [1913 Webster]
Such take too high a strain at first. --Bacon. [1913 Webster]
The genius and strain of the book of Proverbs. --Tillotson. [1913 Webster]
It [Pilgrim's Progress] seems a novelty, and yet contains Nothing but sound and honest gospel strains. --Bunyan. [1913 Webster]
4. Turn; tendency; inborn disposition. Cf. 1st {Strain}. [1913 Webster]
Because heretics have a strain of madness, he applied her with some corporal chastisements. --Hayward. [1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English. 2000.
