stretch
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /stɹɛt͡ʃ/
rhymes: -ɛtʃ
Forms: form: stretches
form: stretching
form: stretched
form: stretched
form: straught
form: straught
form: straight
form: straight
Etymology: From Middle English strecchen, from Old English streċċan (“to stretch, hold out, extend, spread out, prostrate”), from Proto-West Germanic *strakkjan (“to stretch, make taut or tight”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)treg-, *streg-, *treg- (“stiff, rigid”). Cognate with West Frisian strekke, Dutch strekken (“to stretch, straighten”), German strecken (“to stretch, straighten, elongate”), Danish strække (“to stretch”), Swedish sträcka (“to stretch”), Dutch strak (“taut, tight”), Albanian shtriqem (“to stretch”). More at stark.
Senses: examples: text: I stretched the rubber band until it almost broke.
glosses: To lengthen by pulling.
examples: text: The rubber band stretched almost to the breaking point.
text: The inner membrane […] because it would stretch and yield, remained unbroken.
ref: 1659 December 30 (date written), Robert Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air, and Its Effects, (Made, for the Most Part, in a New Pneumatical Engine) […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] H[enry] Hall, printer to the University, for Tho[mas] Robinson, published 1660, →OCLC:
glosses: To lengthen when pulled.
examples: text: First, stretch the skin over the frame of the drum.
glosses: To pull tight.
examples: text: I managed to stretch my coffee supply a few more days.
glosses: To get more use than expected from a limited resource.
examples: text: To say crossing the street was brave is stretching the meaning of "brave" considerably.
text: To say he's been to this park a million times is stretching the numbers. The true number is around 30 or 40.
glosses: To make inaccurate by exaggeration.
examples: text: The beach stretches from Cresswell to Amble.
text: Pretty soon I struck into a sort of path[…]. It twisted and turned,[…]and opened out into a big clear space like a lawn. And, back of the lawn, was a big, old-fashioned house, with piazzas stretching in front of it, and all blazing with lights.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter I, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
text: Behind them, stretching in a long line east and west, were the Roan and Book Cliffs, cut to their base by the river's gorge, and meandering away in long wavy lines distorted by heat haze and the smoke of forest fires.
ref: 1954, Wallace Stegner, Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 75:
text: Three varieties of wild rice, O. rufipogon, O. officinalis and O. meyeriana, have been found in China, in a zone stretching from Hainan to Taiwan and from Northern Kwangsi to Ching-hung¹ on the Upper Mekong in Yunnan.
ref: 1984, Science and Civilization in China, volume 6, Cambridge University Press, published 2004, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 483:
glosses: To extend physically, especially from limit point to limit point.
examples: text: Cats stretch with equal ease and agility beyond the point that breaks a man on the rack.
text: I always stretch my muscles before exercising.
text: When the cat woke up, it yawned and stretched.
glosses: To extend one’s limbs or another part of the body, for example in order to improve the elasticity of one's muscles.
examples: text: His mustache stretched all the way to his sideburns.
glosses: To extend to a limit point
examples: text: Yakubu took advantage of John Ruddy's error to put the visitors back in front, with Chris Samba's header stretching their advantage.
ref: 2011 October 29, Neil Johnston, “Norwich 3-3 Blackburn”, in BBC Sport:
glosses: To increase.
examples: text: a man apt to stretch in his report of facts
glosses: To stretch the truth; to exaggerate.
examples: text: The ship stretched to the eastward.
topics: nautical
transport
glosses: To sail by the wind under press of canvas.
synonyms: word: truss
word: forhang
word: Guy Fawkes
word: hang
word: ketch
word: send to the scaffold
word: scrag
word: stretch
word: string up
word: truss
word: tuck up
glosses: To execute by hanging.
examples: text: Her bizarre explanation really stretches credulity.
text: By the fullest exploitation of modern signalling, multiple-unit operation and flying and burrowing junctions the S.R. has greatly increased the capacity of its tracks to carry this growing load of peak-hour passengers, but that capacity is now stretched to the limit.
ref: 1960 March, “Talking of Trains: The problem of the peak”, in Trains Illustrated, page 130:
glosses: To make great demands on the capacity or resources of something.
Related terms: pandiculate