strained

His breath became so strained that he was forced to quit his job as a horticulturalist for the parks department.

The alliance between America and rebel forces has been strained by the U.S. refusal to directly attack the Assad regime.

Relationships in her "blood family," a distinction her brother pointedly made at her funeral, were often strained and fractious.

The weakness of any case becomes clear when the logic used to make the arguments is strained, selective and irrelevant.

Mayor Doyle and Premier Napthine are known to have a strained political relationship.

The American boys were tense and strained, knowing that in a few hours they would be facing death.

At the end of six months she strained the scales at two hundred and twenty.

The term ὄργανα, properly signifying instruments, appears here by a strained metaphor.

A man going into battle might look, so she thought, as Roger Ormiston looked now—very stern and strained.

He was somehow sensible of its convolutions as he stood against the wall and strained his eyes into the dusk.