Straining
noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 The act by which one strains. (muscles, etc)
"sundry violent gaspings and strainings"
- 2 an intense or violent exertion wordnet
- 3 filtering, the process of passing something through a strainer.
"Then after that process which Culverwel describes as so many strainings, refinings, and clarifyings, the mind is prepared for a true insight into the real nature of the world by way of intuition."
- 4 the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean wordnet
- 1 present participle and gerund of strain form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 1 taxing to the utmost; testing powers of endurance wordnet
Example
More examples"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.