Emily Dickinson Lexicon

STRAIN, n.

1. A violent effort; a stretching or exertion of the limbs or muscles, or of any thing else.
2. An injury by excessive exertion, drawing or stretching. – Grew.
3. Style; continued manner of speaking or writing; as, the genius and strain of the Book of Proverbs. – Tillotson. So we say, poetic strains, lofty strains.
4. Song; note; sound; or a particular part of a tune. Their heavenly harps a lower strain began. – Dryden.
5. Turn; tendency; inborn disposition. Because heretics have a strain of madness, he applied her with some corporal chastisements. Hayward.
6. Manner of speech or action. Such take too high a strain at first. – Bacon.
7. Race; generation; descent. He is of a noble strain. [Not in use.] – Shak.
8. Hereditary disposition. Intemperance and lust breed diseases, which propagated, spoil the strain of a nation. [Not in use.] – Tillotson.
9. Rank; character. [Not in use.] – Dryden.