Word.ws English Dictionary

gnat-strain

gnat-strain verb: to fuss or give undue importance to trivial things, often to the exclusion of truly significant issues.

Verb

gnat-strain (third-person singular simple present gnat-strains, present participle gnat-straining, simple past and past participle gnat-strained)

  1. To fuss or give undue importance to trivial things, often to the exclusion of truly significant issues.

Forms of gnat-strain

third-person singular presentgnat-strains
present participlegnat-straining
past participlegnat-strained
pastgnat-strained

Origin of gnat-strain

Back-formation from gnat-strainer or gnat-straining.

Questions about gnat-strain

What does gnat-strain mean?
Gnat-strain means to fuss or give undue importance to trivial things, often to the exclusion of truly significant issues.
What part of speech is gnat-strain?
Gnat-strain is a verb.
What is the past tense of gnat-strain?
The past tense of gnat-strain is gnat-strained.

Words near gnat-strain in the dictionary

  1. gnat's ass
  2. gnat's chuff
  3. gnat's pee
  4. gnat's prick
  5. gnat's whisker
  6. gnat-strain
  7. gnat-strainer
  8. gnat-strainers
  9. gnat-straining
  10. gnatcatcher
  11. gnatcatchers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gnat-strain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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