A glossary of Tudor and Stuart words, especially from the dramatists

by Walter W. Skeat

strain, race, descent, breed; ‘The noblest of thy strain’, Jul. Caes. v. 1. 59; Hen. V, ii. 4. 51. A dialect form of [strene], q.v.

strain: phr. to strain courtesy, to stand upon ceremony, to refuse to go first, Venus and Ad. 888.

strain, to distrain, Gascoigne, Steel Glas, 1104. In prov. use, see EDD. (s.v. Strain, vb.³).

strain, to restrain, repress; ‘These stormy windes to straine, or make to blow’, Phaer, Aeneid i, 80.

strake, a particular note blown by a hunter; apparently after the game is killed; ‘To the flyghte, to the dethe, and to strake, and many other blastes and termes’, Morte Arthur, leaf 250, back, 11; bk. x, c. 52; ‘Then [after the death of the game] should the most master blow a mote and stroke’, The Master of Game, ch. 35. Cp. ME. strake, to sound a note, to sound a blast on a trumpet (Wars Alex. 1386).

strake, the hoop of a cart-wheel or chariot-wheel. Chapman, tr. of Iliad, xx. 247; Bible, Ezek. i. 18 (margin). In prov. use for a section or strip of the iron tire or rim of a cart-wheel, see EDD. (s.v. Strake, sb.¹ 2).

stramazoun, a downright blow. B. Jonson, Every Man out of Humour, iv. 4 (Fast. Brisk); stramison, Nabbes, Microcosmus, ii. 1 (Choler). Ital. stramazzone, ‘a downright blow’; deriv. of stramazzare, ‘to kill throughly’ (Florio); cp. F. estramaçon, a stroke given with the edge of the sword (Hatzfeld).

strange, belonging to another country, foreign; ‘Joseph . . . made himselfe strange unto them’, Bible, Gen. xlii. 7 (i.e. acted as a stranger towards them); ‘Strange children’, foreigners, Psalm xviii. 45, 46 (P.B.V.); ‘A strange tongue’, Cymbeline, i. 6. 54; to make it strange, to seem to be surprised or shocked, Two Gent. i. 2. 102; Titus And. ii. 1. 81; B. Jonson, Alchemist, i. 1 (Subtle). OF. estrange, foreign; L. extraneus.

strangeness, shyness, like that of a stranger. Middleton, The Witch, iii. 2 (Isabella).

strappado, a kind of torture. 1 Hen. IV, ii. 4. 262. The torture consisted in drawing a person up by his arms (fastened together behind his back), and then letting him drop suddenly with a jerk, which inflicted severe pain. The word has been turned into a Spanish-looking form, but it appears to be rather of Italian origin. Ital. strappata, a pulling-up (Florio). Cp. F. strapade (16th cent., Godefroy); estrapade (Dict. de l’Acad., 1762). See Stanford.