strain
strain is a 6-letter English word with 41 senses as noun, adjective, intransitive verb, and verb in the JumbleFix dictionary. One common meaning is: Race; stock; generation; descent; family. Face value is 6 in Scrabble and 7 in Words With Friends. Use the entries below when you need a playable sense, a nearby word, or another arrangement of the same letters.
Definitions
- noun. Race; stock; generation; descent; family.
- noun. Hereditary character, quality, or disposition.
- noun. Rank; a sort.
- adjective. To draw with force; to extend with great effort; to stretch; as, to strain a rope; to strain the shrouds of a ship; to strain the cords of a musical instrument.
- adjective. To act upon, in any way, so as to cause change of form or volume, as forces on a beam to bend it.
- adjective. To exert to the utmost; to ply vigorously.
- adjective. To stretch beyond its proper limit; to do violence to, in the matter of intent or meaning; as, to strain the law in order to convict an accused person.
- adjective. To injure by drawing, stretching, or the exertion of force; as, the gale strained the timbers of the ship.
- adjective. 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.
- adjective. To squeeze; to press closely.
- adjective. To make uneasy or unnatural; to produce with apparent effort; to force; to constrain.
- adjective. To urge with importunity; to press; as, to strain a petition or invitation.
- adjective. 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.
- intransitive verb. To make violent efforts.
- intransitive verb. To percolate; to be filtered; as, water straining through a sandy soil.
- noun. The act of straining, or the state of being strained.
- noun. 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.
- noun. A change of form or dimensions of a solid or liquid mass, produced by a stress.
- noun. 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.
- noun. 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.
- noun. Turn; tendency; inborn disposition. Cf. 1st Strain.
- noun. the act of singing
"with a shout and a song they marched up to the gates"
- noun. an intense or violent exertion
- noun. an effortful attempt to attain a goal
- noun. the general meaning or substance of an utterance
"although I disagreed with him I could follow the tenor of his argument"
- noun. a succession of notes forming a distinctive sequence
"she was humming an air from Beethoven"
- noun. a special variety of domesticated animals within a species
"he experimented on a particular breed of white rats"
"he created a new strain of sheep"
- noun. (biology) a group of organisms within a species that differ in trivial ways from similar groups
"a new strain of microorganisms"
- noun. (physics) deformation of a physical body under the action of applied forces
- noun. injury to a muscle (often caused by overuse); results in swelling and pain
- noun. (psychology) nervousness resulting from mental stress
"his responsibilities were a constant strain"
"the mental strain of staying alert hour after hour was too much for him"
- noun. difficulty that causes worry or emotional tension- R.J.Samuelson
"she endured the stresses and strains of life"
"he presided over the economy during the period of the greatest stress and danger"
- verb. cause to be tense and uneasy or nervous or anxious
"he got a phone call from his lawyer that tensed him up"
- verb. alter the shape of (something) by stress
"His body was deformed by leprosy"
- verb. to exert much effort or energy
"straining our ears to hear"
- verb. use to the utmost; exert vigorously or to full capacity
"He really extended himself when he climbed Kilimanjaro"
"Don't strain your mind too much"
- verb. rub through a strainer or process in an electric blender
"puree the vegetables for the baby"
- verb. remove by passing through a filter
"filter out the impurities"
- verb. separate by passing through a sieve or other straining device to separate out coarser elements
"sift the flour"
- verb. become stretched or tense or taut "the rope strained when the weight was attached"
"the bodybuilder's neck muscles tensed;"
- verb. test the limits of
"You are trying my patience!"
Synonyms
song, straining, nisus, pains, striving, tenor, air, line, melody, tune, breed, stock, form, variant, stress, tense, deform, distort, reach, strive, extend, puree, filter, filtrate
Anagrams
Other playable words that use exactly the letters in strain:
Common word forms
strains, strained, strainer, straining, strainable, strainless
Words from these letters
If you are holding these tiles, the unscrambler for STRAIN lists every valid word you can make from the same letters, including shorter plays.