Restrain

How to spell restrain

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce restrain

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does restrain mean?

1. verbTo hold back, control, or keep something or someone within limits.

Restrain in a sentence

• The new budget rules restrain how much each department can spend.

• Security staff had to restrain the man before the police arrived.

Where does restrain come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This verb travelled into English in the 1300s from the Old French restreindre, which itself came from the Latin restringere, a compound of re- meaning 'back' and stringere meaning 'to draw tight' or 'to bind'. The literal Latin sense was to bind something back or pull it firmly into check, and that physical idea of tightening a cord softened over time into the modern sense of holding a person, animal, or feeling under control. The same stringere root sits inside a whole family of relatives such as 'restrict', 'stringent', 'strict', and even 'strain' itself, all carrying the notion of tightness or constraint. The spelling keeps the single -strain ending rather than the -strict of its cousin, which is the main thing to fix in memory: it ends like 'strain', not like 'restrict'.

How the word is built

• re- (back)
• strain (from Latin stringere: to draw tight, bind)