Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of overstrain.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Although Mumbai has a well developed public transport system that includes suburban rail and buses, the network is "overstrained" and so the city also sees a lot of car traffic, which affects air quality.

    How Green Are India's Cities? 2011

  • "We'll find some nice war-work for you presently" ... and meanwhile, the household was short-handed, Mrs. Rainham was overstrained -- Cecilia found later that her stepmother was always "overstrained" whenever she spoke of leaving home -- and duties multiplied about her and hemmed her in.

    Back to Billabong Mary Grant Bruce 1918

  • Harnack -- who has already reviewed his pages in the _Expositor_, and who, to a great extent, adheres to the views which they propound -- admits, notwithstanding, that he has "overstrained" his case, and has adduced as witnesses writers of the second and third centuries of whom it is impossible to prove that they knew anything of the letters attributed to Ignatius.

    The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious A Reply to the Right Rev. Dr. Lightfoot 1854

  • I have flaunted these truisms before you in order to exorcise that modern slang of yours which is more false than the overstrained forms of a feudal France.

    The Kempton-Wace Letters 2010

  • Event TV was thought to be dying as channels proliferated, people timeshifted their viewing and audiences fragmented in a way that made the viewing figures of yesteryear 21.6 million to find out who shot JR, 28 million every time Eric and Ernie popped their Christmas hats on, 32.3 million for the 1966 World Cup seem like the fevered dream of an overstrained ITV exec.

    How Twitter saved event TV 2012

  • Coming too soon to an overcrowded, overstrained and overleveraged metropolis near you.

    TV review: Dispatches – Olympic Tickets for Sale; Storyville – If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front 2012

  • “The braking thrusters are firing too hot!” she said, shouting to be heard above the overstrained sublight propulsion system that seemed about to rattle the ship apart.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire Michael A. Martin 2010

  • If he doesn't say yes, I promise myself, I will stab him through his engorged and overstrained heart, and put us both out of our misery.

    Lucy Mangan: Toryboy's turning into a weight on my mind 2010

  • “The braking thrusters are firing too hot!” she said, shouting to be heard above the overstrained sublight propulsion system that seemed about to rattle the ship apart.

    Star Trek: Typhon Pact: Seize the Fire Michael A. Martin 2010

  • “They were there, in short, because America did not yet know what it was all about; and because they were there they contributed mightily to the fact that an overstrained army driven from the field in defeat dissolved into a wild and disorderly rout which no man could stop.”

    Louisa May Alcott Susan Cheever 2010

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