straining

• Audio (US):

  (file)

straining

1. present participle and gerund of strain

straining (plural strainings)

1. The act by which one strains. (muscles, etc)
   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 4, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     sundry violent gaspings and strainings

2. filtering, the process of passing something through a strainer.
   • 1931, John de Boer, The Theory of Knowledge of the Cambridge Platonists, page 64:

     Then after that process which Culverwel describes as so many strainings, refinings, and clarifyings, the mind is prepared for a true insight into the real nature of the world by way of intuition.

• trainings