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Stretch   /strɛtʃ/   Listen
verb
Stretch  v. t.  (past & past part. stretched; pres. part. stretching)  
1.
To reach out; to extend; to put forth. "And stretch forth his neck long and small." "I in conquest stretched mine arm."
2.
To draw out to the full length; to cause to extend in a straight line; as, to stretch a cord or rope.
3.
To cause to extend in breadth; to spread; to expand; as, to stretch cloth; to stretch the wings.
4.
To make tense; to tighten; to distend forcibly. "The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain."
5.
To draw or pull out to greater length; to strain; as, to stretch a tendon or muscle. "Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve."
6.
To exaggerate; to extend too far; as, to stretch the truth; to stretch one's credit. "They take up, one day, the most violent and stretched prerogative."


Stretch  v. i.  
1.
To be extended; to be drawn out in length or in breadth, or both; to spread; to reach; as, the iron road stretches across the continent; the lake stretches over fifty square miles. "As far as stretcheth any ground."
2.
To extend or spread one's self, or one's limbs; as, the lazy man yawns and stretches.
3.
To be extended, or to bear extension, without breaking, as elastic or ductile substances. "The inner membrane... because it would stretch and yield, remained umbroken."
4.
To strain the truth; to exaggerate; as, a man apt to stretch in his report of facts. (Obs. or Colloq.)
5.
(Naut.) To sail by the wind under press of canvas; as, the ship stretched to the eastward.
Stretch out, an order to rowers to extend themselves forward in dipping the oar.


noun
Stretch  n.  
1.
Act of stretching, or state of being stretched; reach; effort; struggle; strain; as, a stretch of the limbs; a stretch of the imagination. "By stretch of arms the distant shore to gain." "Those put a lawful authority upon the stretch, to the abuse of yower, under the color of prerogative."
2.
A continuous line or surface; a continuous space of time; as, grassy stretches of land. "A great stretch of cultivated country." "But all of them left me a week at a stretch."
3.
The extent to which anything may be stretched. "Quotations, in their utmost stretch, can signify no more than that Luther lay under severe agonies of mind." "This is the utmost stretch that nature can."
4.
(Naut.) The reach or extent of a vessel's progress on one tack; a tack or board.
5.
Course; direction; as, the stretch of seams of coal.
To be on the stretch, to be obliged to use one's utmost powers.
Home stretch. See under Home, a.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Stretch" Quotes from Famous Books



... he to himself, "thou sleeper! Thou noontide sleeper! Well then, up, ye old legs! It is time and more than time; many a good stretch of road is still ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. 'If I die to-morrow,' he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, 'I have lived to be older than my father.' The weight of thought and feeling burdened ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... and Treves had been highly successful in their business operations; and, enjoying as they did the patronage of the lite of the city, they, with but little stretch of their imaginative powers, could see a fortune at no ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... Douglass and maple sugar and Philetus and an unfilled wood-yard and an empty flour-barrel, and revelled in the pure ether. A dark rising ground covered with wood sometimes rose between her and the western horizon; and then a long stretch of snow, only less pure, would leave free view of its unearthly white light, dimmed by no exhalation, a gentle, mute, but not the less eloquent, witness to Earth of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... she never once dreamed of the possibility of Ramona's wedding Alessandro. A clandestine affair, an intrigue of more or less intensity, such as she herself might have carried on with any one of the shepherds,—this was the utmost stretch of Margarita's angry imaginations in regard to her young mistress's liking for Alessandro. There was not, in her way of looking at things, any impossibility of such a thing as that. But marriage! It might be questioned whether that idea would have been any more startling to the ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson


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