An intense or violent exertion

Usage examples of strain.

I segued into the second movement, that sense of bright expectation replaced by the slow, haunting strains of the Adagio, at once lyrical and sad -- mirroring the turns my own life had taken, the shifting harmonies sounding to me like the raised voices of ghosts, of echoes.

They were gradually adapting to living off algae they strained out of seawater.

In the present instance, the whole strain of the argument comes upon the adequacy of the proposed test of truth, viz.

I happen to remember because it was just two year before that a strain of human aftosa developed in a Bolivian lavatory got loose through the medium of a Chinchilla coat fixed an income tax case in Kansas City.

Kelliher set to work, grunting and straining, and Alan wanted to help but could not.

I strained to see across the waters and catch a glimpse of distant Alba, but we were too far, here.

John Vanderson was not and never would be a Kappa, and his wife was hardly the kind to need cutesy notes to remind her of anything whatsoever I doubted alumnae paid dues, although they were likely to be dunned by National on a regular basis right up until the opening strains of the funerary procession.

It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well--seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognizable chromaticism.

From forwards, a well-muffled observer could make out the jolly boat ahead with the ancipital rowers straining as they pulled the warship out of harbour.

She lifted her chin, raising strained aquamarine eyes to meet a gaze as stormy as the threatening glow inside a volcano about to erupt.

It would be very difficult to obtain a strain of Ebola, but it would be easier to obtain strains of arenaviruses from rodents in their natural habitat.

Of an arthritic little islander, whose French and African blood had strained its way into the Jamaican aristocracy and MI5 by way of Eton and Oxford.

The child, with face ashy white and eyes glistening, her spirit borne aloft by the fervent strains of the litanies, was gazing at the altar, where in imagination she could see the roses multiplying and falling in cascades.

Immense asses strained neon pink and chartreuse capris to the awful bursting point.

His wounded head beat with tremendous and straining painfulness, as though it would burst asunder, and he was possessed by a burning thirst that seemed to consume his very vitals.