6. To injure in the muscles or joints by causing to make too strong an effort; to harm by overexertion; to
sprain; as, to strain a horse by overloading; to strain the wrist; to strain a muscle.
Prudes decayed about may track,
Strain their necks with looking back.
Swift. 7. To squeeze; to press closely.
Evander with a close embrace
Strained his departing friend.
Dryden. 8. To make uneasy or unnatural; to produce with apparent effort; to force; to constrain.
He talks and plays with Fatima, but his mirth
Is forced and strained.
Denham.
The quality of mercy is not strained.
Shak. 9. To urge with importunity; to press; as, to strain a petition or invitation.
Note, if your lady strain his entertainment.
Shak. 10. To press, or cause to pass, through a strainer, as through a screen, a cloth, or some porous substance; to
purify, or separate from extraneous or solid matter, by filtration; to filter; as, to strain milk through cloth.
To strain a point, to make a special effort; especially, to do a degree of violence to some principle or
to one's own feelings. — To strain courtesy, to go beyond what courtesy requires; to insist somewhat
too much upon the precedence of others; — often used ironically. Shak.
Strain
(Strain) v. i.
1. To make violent efforts. "Straining with too weak a wing." Pope.
To build his fortune I will strain a little.
Shak. 2. To percolate; to be filtered; as, water straining through a sandy soil.
Strain
(Strain), n.
1. The act of straining, or the state of being strained. Specifically: —
(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.
Whether any poet of our country since Shakespeare has exerted a greater variety of powers with less
strain and less ostentation.
Landor.
Credit is gained by custom, and seldom recovers a strain.
Sir W. Temple. (b) (Mech. Physics) A change of form or dimensions of a solid or liquid mass, produced by a stress.
Rankine.
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.
Their heavenly harps a lower strain began.
Dryden. 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
