noun The act of exerting great effort, especially with the muscles.
- You could hear his straining as he hauled the crate upstairs.
- After hours of straining, the team finally pulled the stuck truck out of the mud.
- Years of straining at the gym had made her arms strong.
noun The process of passing a liquid through a strainer.
- 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.
— John de Boer, The Theory of Knowledge of the Cambridge Platonists (1931)
- Straining the stock removes the bones and vegetables.
- Straining the pasta in a colander takes only a few seconds.
- The recipe says straining the soup twice will make it perfectly smooth.
