Noun: stretch
| Singular | stretch |
| Plural | stretches |
Sample Sentences
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I was right in the middle of a stretch when the phone rang.
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That rubber band has quite a bit of stretch.
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It's a bit of a stretch to call Boris Karloff a comedian.
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To say crossing the street was brave was quite a stretch.
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It was an easy trip except for the last stretch, which took forever.
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It's a tough stretch of road in the winter, especially without chains.
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a stretch of cloth
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In the afternoon I went for a stretch into the country, & about 4 it cleared up pretty well, so I hurried back & we got a cart & drove to Bassano, a little town about 8 miles off, that we wanted to see. [a. 1941, Evelyn Underhill, quoted in 2010, Evelyn Underhill, Carol Poston, The Making of a Mystic: New and Selected Letters of Evelyn Underhill (page 81)]
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“Hey, Stretch,” he shouted at a tall, spectacled co-worker, “turn the fucking station, will you? You know I can't stand Rush, and it's all they play on this one. If I hear those assholes whine 'Tom Sawyer' one more time, I may go on a fucking killing spree. [2007, Michael Farrell, Running with Buffalo:]
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Amelia: I mean, you're already a dwarf.
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Gura: Oh, OK, Stretch. [2024 February 10, Amelia Watson, Gawr Gura, 2:46:24 from the start, in 【Deep Rock Galactic】yoooooooooo (YouTube live stream):]
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After the harvest there was a stretch of clear dry weather, and the animals toiled harder than ever […] [1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC:]
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There is a grand stretch in the evenings.
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The '42 Cardinals are best known for their amazing stretch run. St. Louis won 43 of their last 51 games and came back from a double-digit deficit in games in early August to edge out the Dodgers for the N.L. flag. [2000, Rob Neyer, Eddie Epstein, GBaseball Dynasties: The Greatet Teams of All Time, page 179:]
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"Of course, if Cripps likes to stay here and do a stretch for burglary, well and good." [1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 132:]
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He did a seven-year stretch in jail.
Nouns inflected like stretch
penniless-bench,
wintergrass,
kitchen pass,
grey fox,
grey box,
trailer hitch,
paleness,
loaded march,
Tush Push,
horribleness,
slaughteress,
chapparvovirus,
greenwax,
royal flush,
crab cactus,
geostress,
syngas,
wintercress,
ichthys,
ichthus, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
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. See: Old English Nouns '
streċċan', Swedish Nouns '
sträcka'.