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Subjected to great or excessive tension; wrenched; weakened; as, strained relations between old friends.

Marked by constraint; not free; not voluntary; embarrassed; as, a constrained manner; a constrained tone.

By constraint or compulsion; in a constrained manner. Hooker.

Half-bred; imperfect. [R.] "A half-strained villain." Dryden.

With restraint. Hammond.

Restrained by one's self or itself; restrained by one's own power or will.

Not strained; not cleared or purified by straining; as, unstrained oil or milk.

ly : To give (one's self) up without attempt at self- control ; to yield (one's self) unrestrainedly ; -- often in a bad sense. He abandoned himself . . . to his favorite vice. Macaulay.

Unrestrainedly.

d no such thing Shak. Abuse of distress (Law), a wrongful using of an animal or chattel distrained, by the distrainer.

s, bodily or mental; pertaining to athletic or polemic feats; athletic; combative; hence, strained; unnatural. As a scholar, he [Dr. Parr] was brilliant, but he consumed his power in agonistic displays. De Quincey.

Reduced; lowered; restrained; as, to speak with bated breath. Macaulay.

To be moved or strained out of a straight line; to crook or be curving; to bow. The green earth's end Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend. Milton.

To be restrained from motion, or from customary or natural action, as by friction.

bject or space; that which limits or restrains, or within which something is limited or restrained; limit; confine; extent; boundary. He hath compassed the waters with bounds. Job xxvi. 10. On earth's remotest bounds. Campbell. And mete the bounds of hate and love. Tennyson. To keep within bounds, not to exceed or pass…

To fail in musical quality; as, a singer's voice breaks when it is strained beyond its compass and a tone or note is not completed, but degenerates into an unmusical sound instead. Also, to change in tone, as a boy's voice at puberty.

The head gear with which a horse is governed and restrained, consisting of a headstall, a bit, and reins, with other appendages.

Fig.: Having a large measure of any thing or quality; not limited; not restrained; -- applied to any subject, and retaining the literal idea more or less clearly, the precise meaning depending largely on the substantive. A broad mixture of falsehood. Locke.

Fractured; cracked; disunited; sundered; strained; apart; as, a broken reed; broken friendship.

y; a course of living prescribed for the clergy, less rigid that the monastic, and more restrained that the secular. -- Canonical obedience, submission to the canons of a canons of a church, especially the submission of the inferior cleargy to their bishops, and of other religious orders to their supriors. -- Canonic…