distrain

From Old French destraindre, from Latin distringere (“to pull asunder, stretch out, engage, hinder, molest, Medieval Latin also compel, coerce as by exacting a pledge by a fine or by imprisonment”), from dis- (“apart”) + stringere (“to draw tight, strain”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dɪˈstɹeɪn/
• Rhymes: -eɪn
• Hyphenation: dis‧train

distrain (third-person singular simple present distrains, present participle distraining, simple past and past participle distrained)

1. (obsolete) To squeeze, press, embrace; to constrain, oppress.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, book VII:

     But when he heard her answeres loth, he knew / Some secret sorrow did her heart distraine […]

   • 1600, Edward Fairfax, The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, XII, xii:

     Thus spake the Prince, and gently 'gan distrain / Now him, now her, between his friendly arms.

2. (law, transitive, obsolete) To force (someone) to do something by seizing their property.
3. (law, intransitive) To seize somebody's property in place of, or to force, payment of a debt.

   to distrain a person by his goods and chattels

4. (obsolete) To pull off, tear apart.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, book II, canto XII:

     For that same net so cunningly was wound, / That neither guile, nor force might it distraine.

• (to seize somebody's property in place of, or to force payment of a debt) distress

• distrain in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• distrain in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• distrain at OneLook Dictionary Search