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.
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Strain (strn), 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, 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 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.
Such take too high a strain at first.
Bacon.
The genius and strain of the book of Proverbs.
Tillotson.
It [Pilgrim's Progress] seems a novelty, and yet contains Nothing
but sound and honest gospel strains.
Bunyan.