To draw out; stretch; extend, especially with effort or care.To draw tight; tighten; make taut.To confine; restrain; imprison.To stretch to the utmost tension; put to the stretch; exert: as, to strain every nerve to accomplish something.To stretch beyond measure; push beyond the proper extent or limit; carry too far.To impair, weaken, or injure by stretching or overtasking; harm by subjection to too great stress or exertion; hence, to sprain.To force; constrain.To urge; press.To press; squeeze; hence, to hug; embrace.To press through a filter or colander; separate extraneous or coarser matters from (a liquid) by causing it to pass through a filter or colander; purify from extraneous matter by filtration; filter: as, to strain milk.To separate or remove by the use of a filter or colander: with out. See phrase under intransitive verb, below.To force out by straining.To deform, as a solid body or structure.= Syn. 10. Bolt, Screen, etc. See sift.To exert one's self; make violent efforts; strive.To urge; press.To stretch strugglingly; stretch with effort.To undergo distortions under force, as a ship in a high sea.To drip; ooze; filter; drain; flow; issue: as, water straining through sand becomes pure.n. Stretch; extent; pitch.n. Stretching or deforming force or pressure; violence.n. Tense or constrained state or condition; tension; great effort.n. In mech., a definite change in the shape or size of a solid body setting up an elastic resistance, or stress, or exceeding the limit of elasticity.n. A stretching of the muscles or tendons, giving rise to subsequent pain and stiffness; sprain; wrench; twist.n. A permanent deformation or injury of a solid structure.n. Stretch; flight or burst, as of imagination, eloquence, or song.n. Tune; melody.n. In a stricter sense, in music, a section of a piece which is more or less complete in itself. In written music the strains are often marked by double bars.n. Tone; key; style or manner of speech or conduct.n. Mood; disposition.n. Relatively to another strain, a strain orthogonal to a stress perfectly concurrent to the other strain.n. Race; stock; generation; descent; hence, family blood; quality or line as regards breeding; breed; a race or breed; a variety, especially an artificial variety, of a domestic animal.n. Hereditary or natural disposition; turn; tendency; character.n. Sort; kind; style.n. Trace; streak.n. The shoot of a tree.n. The track of a deer.To distrain.In photography, said of a lens when an object is brought so near that the image appears distorted.n. In agriculture and horticulture, a group of cultivated plants derived from a race which does not differ from the original race in visible taxonomic characters, but into which has been bred some intrinsic quality, such as a tendency to yield heavily, or a better adaptability to a certain environment. If a breeder by the careful selection of blue-stem wheat should produce a sort of blue-stem which differs from the original race only in the ability to give greater yields, it would be called a strain of blue-stem.n. A name given in Ireland to long masses of half-molded peat before the latter is cut up into briquets for drying and subsequent burning. The peat is excavated from the bog, and by a machine is torn, comminuted, kneaded, and pressed, leaving the machine in continuous rods or bars (strains). On drying, the strains shrink to about half their size when wet.