Other forms: strains, strained, straining
To strain is to pour something through a sieve or a cloth so the liquid runs away and the solid part stays behind. Pasta into a colander, tea leaves caught in a little metal basket, stock poured slowly through muslin.
Strain also means hurting yourself by pushing too hard: you strain a muscle lifting a box, strain your eyes reading in bad light, strain to hear over the traffic. Keep it apart from sprain, which is what you do to an ankle. The noun is pressure of any kind, so there is strain on a rope, strain on a marriage, the strain of looking after someone who is ill. And a strain is a variety as well, a new strain of flu or a hardy strain of wheat, which is a different word wearing the same coat.
1verbstrainTo pour liquid through a sieve or cloth so the solid parts stay behind.~2%
“Strain the pasta and put it straight back in the pan.”
Patternstrain + noun (stock, juice, yoghurt) · strain sth through a sieve / cloth · strained · a strainer
2verbinjureTo injure a muscle by stretching or working it too hard.~2%
“He strained his back lifting the crate.”
3verbpushTo push yourself or something right to the limit.~2%
“She strained to hear what they were saying next door.”
4nounpressurePressure or tension on something or someone.~52%
“The strain of the last few months was showing on his face.”
5nounparticularA particular variety or breed of a plant, virus or bacterium.~42%
“A new strain of the virus appeared in the autumn.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 9 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
stRAIN → like RAIN through the holes
Pour the soup through the fine net and the liquid falls through like rain, while the bones stay behind.
hooks ontorain
The strain that means a breed or variety has a history of its own. It runs from Middle English streen back to Old English streon, gain or wealth, and Proto-Germanic streuna, a heap, treasure or profit, from a root strew-, to spread or strew. In Middle English it meant race, stock, generation: the line a thing comes down from. That is why a strain of wheat or of flu is a family line, not a pressure.
Proto-Indo-European
*strew- — to spread, strew
Proto-Germanic
*streuną — heap, treasure, profit, gain
Proto-West Germanic
*streun
Old English
strēon
Middle English
streen
English, today
strain
Built from
From Middle English streen, strene, streon, istreon (“race, stock, generation”), from Old English strēon, ġestrēon (“gain, wealth”), from Proto-West Germanic streun, from Proto-Germanic streuną (“heap, treasure, profit, gain”), from Proto-Indo-European strew- (“to spread, strew”) (cognate with Old Saxon gistriuni, Old High German gistriuni (“gain, property, wealth, business”), Latin strues (“heap”)). Confused in Middle English with the related noun strend, strynd, strund, from Old English strȳnd (“race; stock”), from strēonan, strȳnan (“to beget; acquire”). Related also to Dutch struinen (“to prowl, root about, rout”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA