What's the difference between contort and strain?

Contort


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To twist, or twist together; to turn awry; to bend; to distort; to wrest.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Obama warned “a contorted reading of the statute” could mean that “millions of people who are obtaining insurance currently with subsidies, suddenly aren’t getting those subsidies, many of them can’t afford it”.
  • (2) The term dystonia was introduced by Oppenheim and Vogt in 1911 to describe the relatively slow, sustained, frequently forceful contorting movements involving striatal muscles.
  • (3) The most famous image of suffering in the Renaissance was an ancient statue dug up in 1506 of the pagan priest Laocoön being strangled by snakes , his face a contorted image of pure suffering.
  • (4) For in situ hybridization on cytogenetic preparations, the results are excellent, but the procedure is contorted and the probe use is increased.
  • (5) Sprawling across 110 hectares on the outskirts of Milan, this crazed collage of undulating tents, tilting green walls and parametrically-contorted lumps can mean only one thing: Expo 2015, latest in a long and controversial tradition of “world’s fairs”, has landed.
  • (6) He had also grown disillusioned with his own role as a propagandist, his contorted attempt to distinguish between 'honest' and 'dishonest' propaganda evidently having failed.
  • (7) Take out the contortions, exaggerations and outright lies from the standard Trump riff – and you have next to nothing.
  • (8) Putin’s face has contorted and smoothed out so much that it’s at times unrecognisable.
  • (9) The substance of his argument was contorted and at times contradictory, but as a leader rather than an individual he had no choice but to be opaque as he sought to keep his party united.
  • (10) Thus it increased the bulging of endothelial cells and contortion of their nuclei, and further increased the number of surface protrusions and the subendothelial space.
  • (11) Since then, Putin's face has contorted and smoothed out so much that it's at times unrecognisable.
  • (12) We investigated the participation of a sympathetic component in the abdominal contortions induced by intraperitoneal injection of 0.6% acetic acid in the mouse.
  • (13) I was ashamed of having married so early, ashamed of how strange and singular my marriage had been, ashamed of my guilt about it, ashamed of the years of moral contortions I'd undergone on my way to divorce, ashamed of my sexual inexperience, ashamed of what an outrageous and judgmental mother I had, ashamed of being a bleeding and undefended person instead of a tower of remoteness and command and intellect like DeLillo or Pynchon, ashamed to be writing a book that seemed to want to turn on the question of whether an outrageous midwestern mother will get one last Christmas at home with her family.
  • (14) Suddenly, free from contortions of caution, they can bring us the simple truth.
  • (15) There were no statistically significant correlations to any of the following parameters: complication of pregnancy by toxaemia, duration of labour, presence of umbilical cord contortion, perinatal distress, Apgar index, mode of delivery, body weight, body length, ratio of weight to length, and blood glucose.
  • (16) On addition of ATP and other hydrolysable nucleotides the microtubule bundle contorts into a helical configuration, a property we have called 'corkscrewing', before straightening again.
  • (17) Signs of infection in 20 snakes included subcutaneous "lumps," violent contortions, and bloody exudate, apparently from the nares.
  • (18) Jo Appleby, the bones expert who excavated the skeleton and has worked on it for months, said it was contorted by scoliosis, which set in some time after he was 10, from an unknown cause.
  • (19) Suddenly, the election campaign is awash with the main parties' contorted version of political geography: proof, once you've got through the usual fog of Westminster language, that 13 years of Labour government have left the UK's regional, national – and fundamentally economic – divisions all too intact.
  • (20) I didn't take much notice at the time, but just writing that sentence makes my face contort with outrage.

Strain


Definition:

  • (n.) Race; stock; generation; descent; family.
  • (n.) Hereditary character, quality, or disposition.
  • (n.) Rank; a sort.
  • (a.) To draw with force; to extend with great effort; to stretch; as, to strain a rope; to strain the shrouds of a ship; to strain the cords of a musical instrument.
  • (a.) To act upon, in any way, so as to cause change of form or volume, as forces on a beam to bend it.
  • (a.) To exert to the utmost; to ply vigorously.
  • (a.) To stretch beyond its proper limit; to do violence to, in the matter of intent or meaning; as, to strain the law in order to convict an accused person.
  • (a.) To injure by drawing, stretching, or the exertion of force; as, the gale strained the timbers of the ship.
  • (a.) To injure in the muscles or joints by causing to make too strong an effort; to harm by overexertion; to sprain; as, to strain a horse by overloading; to strain the wrist; to strain a muscle.
  • (a.) To squeeze; to press closely.
  • (a.) To make uneasy or unnatural; to produce with apparent effort; to force; to constrain.
  • (a.) To urge with importunity; to press; as, to strain a petition or invitation.
  • (a.) To press, or cause to pass, through a strainer, as through a screen, a cloth, or some porous substance; to purify, or separate from extraneous or solid matter, by filtration; to filter; as, to strain milk through cloth.
  • (v. i.) To make violent efforts.
  • (v. i.) To percolate; to be filtered; as, water straining through a sandy soil.
  • (n.) The act of straining, or the state of being strained.
  • (n.) A violent effort; an excessive and hurtful exertion or tension, as of the muscles; as, he lifted the weight with a strain; the strain upon a ship's rigging in a gale; also, the hurt or injury resulting; a sprain.
  • (n.) A change of form or dimensions of a solid or liquid mass, produced by a stress.
  • (n.) A portion of music divided off by a double bar; a complete musical period or sentence; a movement, or any rounded subdivision of a movement.
  • (n.) Any sustained note or movement; a song; a distinct portion of an ode or other poem; also, the pervading note, or burden, of a song, poem, oration, book, etc.; theme; motive; manner; style; also, a course of action or conduct; as, he spoke in a noble strain; there was a strain of woe in his story; a strain of trickery appears in his career.
  • (n.) Turn; tendency; inborn disposition. Cf. 1st Strain.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) These variants may serve as useful gene markers in alcohol research involving animal model studies with inbred strains in mice.
  • (2) None of the strains was found to be positive for cytotoxic enterotoxin in the GM1-ELISA.
  • (3) They are going to all destinations.” Supplies are running thin and aftershocks have strained nerves in the city.
  • (4) In contrast, resting cells of strain CHA750 produced five times less IAA in a buffer (pH 6.0) containing 1 mM-L-tryptophan than did resting cells of the wild-type, illustrating the major contribution of TSO to IAA synthesis under these conditions.
  • (5) We were able to detect genetic recombination between vaccine strains of PRV following in vitro or in vivo coinoculation of 2 strains of PRV.
  • (6) All of the strains examined were motile and hemolytic and produced lipase and liquid gelatin.
  • (7) The taxonomic relationship of strains H4-14 and 25a with previously described Xanthobacter strains was studied by numerical classification.
  • (8) Whereas strain Ga-1 was practically avirulent for mice, strain KL-1 produced death by 21 days in 50% of the mice inoculated.
  • (9) These results suggest that the pelvic floor is affected by progressive denervation but descent during straining tends to decrease with advancing age.
  • (10) We also show that the gene of the main capsid protein is expressed from its own promoter in an Escherichia coli strain.
  • (11) Sequence variation in the gp116 component of cytomegalovirus envelope glycoprotein B was examined in 11 clinical strains and compared with variation in gp55.
  • (12) By hybridization studies, three plasmids in two forms (open circular and supercoiled) were detected in the strain A24.
  • (13) In addition, the fact that microheterogeneity may occur without limit in the mannans of the strains suggests that antibodies with unlimited diverse specificities are produced directed against these antigenic varieties as well.
  • (14) Strains isolated from the environment and staff were not implicated.
  • (15) The compressive strength of bone is proportional to the square of the apparent density and to the strain rate raised to the 0.06 power.
  • (16) Escherichia enterotoxigenic strains, Yersinia enterocolitica and Salmonella typhimurium virulent strains, Campylobacter jejuni clinical isolates possess more pronounced capacity for adhesion to enteric cells of Peyer's plaques than to other types of epithelial cells, which may be of importance in the pathogenesis of these infections.
  • (17) These sequences are also conserved in the same arrangement in minor sequence classes of minicircles from this strain.
  • (18) The isoelectric points (pI) of E1 and E2 for all VEE strains studied were approx.
  • (19) One rat strain (TAS) is susceptible to the anticoagulant and lethal effects of warfarin and the other two strains are homozygous for warfarin resistance genes from either wild Welsh (HW) or Scottish (HS) rats.
  • (20) In these bitches, a strain of E coli identical to the strain in the infected uterus was isolated.