(v. t.) To press heavily upon; to bear down upon with violence; hence, to constrain or compel; to bind; to distress, torment, or afflict.
(v. t.) To rend; to tear.
(v. t.) To seize, as a pledge or indemnification; to take possession of as security for nonpayment of rent, the reparation of an injury done, etc.; to take by distress; as, to distrain goods for rent, or of an amercement.
(v. t.) To subject to distress; to coerce; as, to distrain a person by his goods and chattels.
(v. i.) To levy a distress.
Example Sentences:
(1) Bailiffs will go in to distrain and evict, but no bailiffs knock for the missing billions "tax-planned" away at the top.
Oppress
Definition:
(v. t.) To impose excessive burdens upon; to overload; hence, to treat with unjust rigor or with cruelty.
(v. t.) To ravish; to violate.
(v. t.) To put down; to crush out; to suppress.
(v. t.) To produce a sensation of weight in (some part of the body); as, my lungs are oppressed by the damp air; excess of food oppresses the stomach.
Example Sentences:
(1) I hope this movement will continue and spread for it has within itself the power to stand up to fascism, be victorious in the face of extremism and say no to oppressive political powers everywhere.” Appearing via videolink from Tehran, and joined by London mayor Sadiq Khan and Palme d’Or winner Mike Leigh, Farhadi said: “We are all citizens of the world and I will endeavour to protect and spread this unity.” The London screening of The Salesman on Sunday evening wasintended to be a show of unity and strength against Trump’s travel ban, which attempted to block arrivals in the US from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
(2) Much less obvious – except in the fictional domain of the C Thomas Howell film Soul Man – is why someone would want to “pass” in the other direction and voluntarily take on the weight of racial oppression.
(3) But some warn that oppression of the minority is heading towards breaking point.
(4) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
(5) The terrorists know that if Iraq and Afghanistan survive their assault, come through their travails, seize the opportunity the future offers, then those countries will stand not just as nations liberated from oppression, but as a lesson to humankind everywhere and a profound antidote to the poison of religious extremism.
(6) But there are very oppressed people here and I have to stay with them.
(7) Ukip accuses Theresa May of condoning these “symbols of the oppression of women”.
(8) Similarly at world level, it considers the struggles and efforts by the miserable and oppressed nations for achievement of their legitimate rights and independence as their due rights, because people have the right to liberate their countries from colonialism and obtain their rights.
(9) He added that the producers were also seeking to educate a new generation about the system of apartheid through which South Africa's white minority oppressed the black majority for more than 40 years up to 1990.
(10) "This false notion of choice, which is increasingly used to justify the oppression of women," says Ellis.
(11) The study of 106 pregnant women engaged in microbiological synthesis production revealed the tendency to increasing genitalia contamination by Candida yeast-like fungi, including fungi-protein producers, and also oppression of immunologic reactivity in comparison with nonpregnant women and the control group.
(12) A statement from al-Shabaab on Monday said the latest attack – the deadliest since Westgate – was revenge for the "Kenyan government's brutal oppression of Muslims in Kenya through coercion, intimidation and extrajudicial killings of Muslim scholars".
(13) A 46-year-old woman occasionally experienced palpitation of short duration and chest oppression since 1977.
(14) "We should oppose the practices of the big bullying the small, the strong domineering over the weak and the rich oppressing the poor."
(15) Behind the dancing girls and schmaltzy lyrics that usually characterise pop songs, these men act as the all-oppressing eye of the industry: telling female singers that weight loss and sexual objectification are the only feasible routes to stardom; stripping down women in music videos to their underwear while leaving their male counterparts untouched.
(16) Choosing the example of prisoners' voting rights, which the ECHR has ordered the UK to implement, the supreme court justice observed that the issue "has nothing to do with the oppression of vulnerable minorities".
(17) On Sunday Assange said: "Will it [the US] return to and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on, or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world?"
(18) A 62 year old man, who had underlying diseases of pneumoconiosis and hypertensive heart disease, visited Chikuho Rosai Hospital complaining of chest oppression and general fatigue on Feb. 7, 1987.
(19) We did not perform a sexy version of oppression or create a teasing "naughty" campaign.
(20) He is sexism, male domination, and oppression against women personified.