strain
Definitions
General English
Agriculture
- noun a group within a
species
with distinct characteristics
Aviation
- noun
deformation
caused by stress
Construction
deformation
of amaterial
resulting from external loading. Themeasurement
for strain is the change in length per unit of length.
Electronics
- A lengthening, contraction,
torsion
, or othermechanical
deformation
resulting from an external force. Also called mechanical strain.
Food
- verb to pour liquid through a sieve in order to
separate
out solids
Medical
- noun a condition in which a muscle has been stretched or torn by a strong or
sudden
movement
- noun a group of microorganisms which are different from others of the same type
- noun
nervous
tension
and stress
Publishing
- verb to
remove
impurities orsolid matter
from a liquid by passing it through a mesh
Sports
- verb to damage a part of the body through using it too hard or too much
Origin & History of “strain”
English
has twodistinct
words strain. The older, ‘line of ancestry’ (OE), denotes etymologically ‘something gained by accumulation’. It comesfrom
the prehistoric base *streu- ‘pile up’,which
was related to Latin struere ‘build’ (source of English destroy, structure, etc). In the Old English period the notion of ‘gaining something’ was extended metaphorically to ‘producing offspring’, which formed the jumping-off point for the word’smodern
range of meanings. Strain ‘pull tight, wrench’ (13th c.) was borrowed from estreign-, the stem form of Old French estreindre ‘pull tight, tie’.this
in turn was descended from Latin stringere ‘pull tight, tie tight’ (sourcealso
of English strait, strict, and stringent (17th c.) and of a host of derived formssuch
as constrain (14th c.), prestige, restrain (14th c.) and constrict, district, restrict, etc). Strain ‘tune’ (16th c.) is assumed to be thesame
word,perhaps
deriving ultimately from the notion of ‘stretching’ the strings of a musicalinstrument
.