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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Overstrain

Overstrain \O`ver*strain"\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Overstrained; p. pr. & vb. n. Overstraining.] To strain one's self to excess.
--Dryden.

Overstrain

Overstrain \O`ver*strain"\, v. t. To stretch or strain too much; as, to overstrain one's nerves.
--Ayliffe.

Wiktionary
overstrain

vb. To subject to an excessive demand on strength, resources, or abilities

WordNet
overstrain
  1. n. too much strain

  2. v. strain excessively; "He overextended himself when he accepted the additional assignment" [syn: overextend]

Usage examples of "overstrain".

Sir Stentor, dressed in the most fashionable manner, and behaving with all the overstrained politesse of a native Frenchman.

Thus the longer a wire is stimulated, the more and more overstrained it becomes, and it therefore requires a gradual prolongation of the interval between the successive stimuli, if recovery is to be complete.

She fell into an uneasy dream of dragging bigger and bigger corves up a worse slope than any in the mine, with the Piper behind her dark and faceless and threatening, and her legs jerked and twitched all night as the overstrained muscles tried to remember how to rest.

An Imagist film would offer a noble challenge to the overstrained emotion, the over-loaded splendor, the mere repetition of what are at present the finest photoplays.

He suspected me of some obscure nervous trouble, possibly due to overstrain, made me flex all my muscles, asked even what village I came from and of what disease my grandfather had died--nodded--made notes in a memorandum book--and offered me a seat in his auto to Rawalpindi, where he offered to treat me in the hospital free of charge.

Deep languor overcometh mind and frame: A listless, drowsy, utter weariness, A trance wherein no thought finds speech or name, The overstrained spirit doth possess.

England was already skinned like a rabbit, in Hitler's colorful phrase, by her overstrained war-making, and by Roosevelt's wily anticolonialism.

India, China, Russia, Africa present mélanges of social systems, thrown together, outpaced, overstrained, shattered, invaded, exploited, and more or less subjugated by the finance, machinery, and political aggressions of the Atlantic, Baltic, and Mediterranean civilization.

A gigantic, dish-shaped object lay in the street just ahead, and Eddie's overstrained mind, perhaps cued by the classical buildings on either side of them, produced an image of Jove and Thor playing Frisbee.

In Inyo County (California) a geometrical figure in a cave drawing is recognisable—without overstraining the imagination—as a normal slide-rule in a double frame.

His overstrained legs and arms were trembling so uncontrollably that he was almost unable to help him self, and he was content to be handled like a half-para lysed invalid.

Dumarest leaned back, conscious of the quiver of overstrained muscles, the jerk of overtired nerves and knowing that he had driven them both too hard.

And, if this is true, the inference clearly is, that when the strings of the body are unduly loosened or overstrained through disorder or other injury, then the soul, though most divine, like other harmonies of music or of works of art, of course perishes at once.

All spaceship repair services have been overstrained and the resulting inefficiency is believed responsible for the disasters.

As if something had been lifted from the sagging grasp of his combined manual extensors, a load which overstrained the metabattery and made the ominous black smoke rise from the trans­former, gear box, and bank of selenoids of his cart.