Emily Dickinson Lexicon

STRIDE, v.t.

To pass over at a step. See him stride / Valleys wide. – Arbuthnot.

STRID'ING, ppr.

Walking with long steps; passing over at a step.

STRI'DOR, n. [L.]

A harsh creaking noise, or a crack. – Dryden.

STRID'U-LOUS, a. [L. stridulus.]

Making a small harsh sound or a creaking. – Brown.

STRIFE, n. [Norm. estrif. See Strive.]

1. Exertion or contention for superiority; contest of emulation, either by intellectual or physical efforts. Strife may be carried on between students or between mechanics. Thus gods contended, noble strife, / Who most should ease the wants of life. – Congreve.
2. Contention in anger or enmity; contest; struggle for victory; quarrel or war. I and my people were at great strife with the children of Ammon. – Judges xii. These vows thus granted, rais'd a strife above / Betwixt the god of war and queen of love. – Dryden.
3. Opposition; contrariety; contrast. Artificial strife / Lives in these touches livelier than life. – Shak.
4. The agitation produced by different qualities; as, the strife of acid and alkali. [Little used.] – Johnson.

STRIFE-FUL, a.

Contentious; discordant. The ape was strifeful, and ambitious, / And the fox guileful and most covetous. – Spenser.

STRIG'IL, n. [L.]

Among the ancients, a little instrument of ivory or horn used for rubbing the skin. – Elmes.

STRIG'MENT, n. [L. strigmentum, from stringo.]

Scraping; that which is scraped off. [Not in use.] – Brown.

STRIG'OSE, or STRI'GOUS, a. [L. strigosus, from strigo.]

In botany, a strigous leaf is one set with stiff lanceolate bristles. – Martyn.

STRIKE, n.

1. An instrument with a straight edge for leveling a measure of grain, salt and the like, for scraping of what is above the level of the top. – America.
2. A bushel; four pecks. [Local.] – Tusser.
3. A measure of four bushels or half a quarter. [Local.] – Encyc.
4. The act of combining and demanding higher wages for work. [Modern English.]
5. In geology, the direction in which the edge of a stratum appears at the surface. Strike of flax, a handful that may be hackled at once. [Local.]

STRIKE, v.i.

1. To make a quick blow or thrust. It pleas'd the king / To strike at me upon his misconstruction. – Shak.
2. To hit; to collide; to dash against; to clash; as, a hammer strikes against the bell of a clock.
3. To sound by percussion; to be struck. The clock strikes.
4. To make an attack. A puny subject strikes / At thy great glory. – Shak.
5. To hit; to touch; to act on by appulse. Hinder light from striking on it, and its colors vanish. Locke.
6. To sound with blows. Whilst any trump did sound, or drum struck up. – Shak.
7. To run upon; to be stranded. The ship struck at twelve, and remained fast.
8. To pass with a quick or strong effect; to dart; to penetrate. Now and then a beam of wit or passion strikes through the obscurity of the poem. – Dryden.
9. To lower a flag or colors in token of respect, or to signify a surrender of the ship to an enemy.
10. To break forth; as, to strike into reputation. [Not in use.] To strike in, to enter suddenly also, to recede from the surface, as an eruption; to disappear. To strike in with, to conform to; to suit itself to; to join with at once. – South. To strike out, to wander; to make a sudden excursion; as to strike out into an irregular course of life. – Collier. To strike, among workmen in manufactories, in England, is to quit work in a body or by combination, in order to compel their employers to raise their wages.

STRIKE, v.t. [pret. struck; pp. struck and stricken, but struck is in the most common use. Strook is wholly obsolete. Sax. astrican, to strike, D. stryken, to strike, and to stroke, smooth, to anoint or rub over, to slide; G. streichen, to pass, move or ramble, to depart, to touch, to stroke, to glide or glance over, to lower or strike, as sails, to curry, (L. stringo, strigil,) to sweep together, to spread, as a plaster, to play on a violin, to card, as wool, to strike or whip, as with a rod; streich, strich, a stroke, stripe or lash, Eng. streak; Dan. streg, a stroke; stryger, to rub, to stroke, to strike, to trim, to iron or smooth, to strike, as sails, to whip, to play on a violin, to glide along, to plane; Sw. stryka, id. We see that strike, stroke and streak, and the L. stringo, whence strain, strict, stricture, &c., are all radically one word. Strong is of the same family. Hence we see the sense is to rub, to scrape; but it includes often the sense of thrusting. It is to touch or graze with a sweeping or stroke. Hence our sense of striking a measure of grain, and strike, strickle, and a stroke of the pencil in painting. Hence the use of stricken applied to age, worn with age, as in the L. strigo, the same word differently applied. Hence also we see the propriety of the use of stricture, applied to criticism. It seems to formed on the root of rake and stretch.]

1. To touch or hit with some force, either with the hand an instrument; to give a blow to, either with the open hand, hand, the fist, a stick, club or whip, or with a pointed instrument, or with a ball or an arrow discharged. An arrow struck the shield; a ball strikes a ship between wind and water. He at Philippi kept / His sword e'en like a dancer, while I struck / The lean and wrinkled Cassius. – Shak.
2. To dash; to throw with a quick motion. They shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts. – Exod. xii.
3. To stamp; to impress; to coin; as, to strike coin at the mint; to strike dollars or sovereigns; also, to print; as, to strike five hundred copies of a book.
4. To thrust in; to cause to enter or penetrate; as, a tree strikes its root deep.
5. To punish; to afflict; as smite is also used. To punish the just is not good, nor to strike princes for equity. – Prov. xvii.
6. To cause to sound; to notify by sound; as, the clock strikes twelve; the drums strike up a march. – Shak. Knolles.
7. In seamanship, to lower; to let down; as, to strike sail; to strike a flag or ensign; to strike a yard or a top-mast in a gale; [that is, to run or slip down.] – Mar. Dict.
8. To impress strongly; to affect sensibly with strong emotion; as, to strike the mind with surprise; to strike with wonder, alarm, dread or horror. Nice works of art strike and surprise us most on the first view. – Atterbury. They please as beauties, here as wonders strike. – Pope.
9. To make and ratify; as, to strike a bargain, L. fœdus ferire. This expression probably arose from the practice of the parties striking a victim when they concluded a bargain.
10. To produce by a sudden action. Waving wide her myrtle wand, / She strikes a universal peace through sea and land. – Milton.
11. To affect in some particular manner by a sudden impression or impulse; as, the plan proposed strikes me favorably; to strike one dead; to strike one blind; to strike one dumb. – Shak. Dryden.
12. To level a measure of grain, salt or the like, by scraping off with a straight instrument what is above the level of the top.
13. To lade into a cooler. – Edwards' W. Indies.
14. To be advanced or worn with age; used in the participle; as, he was stricken in years or age; well struck in years. – Shak.
15. To run on; to ground; as a ship. To strike up, to cause to sound; to begin to beat. Strike up the drums. – Shak. #2. To begin to sing or play; as, to straw up a tune. To strike off, to erase from an account; to deduct; as, to strike off the interest of a debt. #2. To impress; to print; as, to strike off a thousand copies of a book. #3. To separate by a blow or any sudden action; as, to strike off a man's head with a cimiter; to strike off what is superfluous or corrupt. To strike out, to produce by collision; to force out; as, to strike out sparks with steel. #2. To blot out; to efface; to erase. To methodize is as necessary as to strike out. – Pope. #3. To form something new by a quick effort; to devise; to invent; to contrive; as, to strike out a new plan of finance.

STRIKE-BLOCK, n. [strike and block.]

A plane shorter than a jointer, used for shooting a short joint. – Moxon.

STRIK'ER, n.

1. One that strikes, or that which strikes.
2. In Scripture, a quarrelsome man. – Tit. i.

STRIK'ING, ppr.

1. Hitting with a blow; impressing; imprinting; punishing; lowering, as sails or a mast, &c.
2. adj. Affecting with strong emotions; surprising; forcible impressive; as, a striking representation or image.
3. Strong; exact; adapted to make impression; as, a striking resemblance of features.

STRIK'ING-LY, adv.

In such a manner as to affect or surprise; forcibly; strongly; impressively.

STRIK'ING-NESS, n.

The quality of affecting or surprising.

STRING, n. [Sax. string; D. and Dan. streng; G. strang; also Dan. strikke; G. strick; connected with strong, L. stringo, from drawing, stretching; Ir. srang, a string; sreangaim, to draw.]

1. A small rope, line or cord, or a slender strip of leather or other like substance, used for fastening or tying things.
2. A ribin. Round Ormond's knee thou ty'st the mystic string. – Prior.
3. A thread on which any thing is filed; and hence, a line of things; as, a string of shells or beads. – Addison.
4. The cord of a musical instrument, as of a harpsichord harp or violin; as, an instrument of ten strings. Scripture.
5. A fiber, as of a plant. Duck weed putteth forth a little string into the water, from the bottom. – Bacon.
6. A nerve or tendon of an animal body. The string of his tongue was loosed. – Mark vii. [This is not a technical word.]
7. The line or cord of a bow. He twangs the quiv'ring string. – Pope.
8. A series of things connected or following in succession; any concatenation of things; as, a string of arguments; a string of propositions.
9. In ship-building, the highest range of planks in a ship's ceiling, or that between the gunwale and the upper edge ports. – Mar. Dict.
10. The tough substance that unites the two parts of the pericarp of leguminous plants; as, the strings of beans. To have two strings to the bow, to have two expedients for executing a project or gaining a purpose; to have a double advantage, or to have two views. [In the latter sense, unusual.]

STRING, v.t. [pret. and pp. strung.]

1. To furnish with strings. Has not wise nature strung the legs and feet? – Gay.
2. To put in tune a stringed instrument. For here the muse so oft her harp has strung. – Addison.
3. To file; to put on a line; as, to string beads or pearls. – Spectator.
4. To make tense; to strengthen. Toil strung the nerves, and purified the blood. – Dryden.
5. To deprive of strings; as, to string beans.

STRING'BOARD, n.

A board with its face next the well-hole in a wooden staircase, which receives the end of the steps. – Brande.

STRING'ED, a.

1. Having strings; as, a stringed instrument.
2. Produced by strings; as, stringed noise.

STRIN'GENT, a. [for Astringent, binding, is not in use.]

– Thomson.

STRING'HALT, n. [string and halt.]

A sudden twitching of the hinder leg of a horse, or an involuntary or convulsive motion of the muscles that extend or bend the hough. – Far. Dict. [This word, in some of the United States, is corrupted into Springhalt.]

STRING'I-NESS, n.

The state of being stringy.

STRING'ING, ppr.

Furnishing with strings; putting in tune; filing; making tense; depriving of strings.