stretch vs stretching

stretch

noun
  • An act of stretching. 

  • The ability to lengthen when pulled. 

  • A jail or prison term. 

  • Term of address for a tall person. 

  • A segment of a journey or route. 

  • A length of time. 

  • Extended daylight hours, especially said of the evening in springtime when compared to the shorter winter days. 

  • The period of the season between the trade deadline and the beginning of the playoffs. 

  • A stretch limousine. 

  • The homestretch, the final straight section of the track leading to the finish. 

  • A jail or prison term of one year's duration. 

  • A course of thought which diverts from straightforward logic, or requires extraordinary belief or exaggeration. 

  • A segment or length of material. 

  • A long reach in the direction of the ball with a foot remaining on the base by a first baseman in order to catch the ball sooner. 

  • A single uninterrupted sitting; a turn. 

  • A quick pitching delivery used when runners are on base where the pitcher slides his leg instead of lifting it. 

verb
  • To get more use than expected from a limited resource. 

  • To make great demands on the capacity or resources of something. 

  • To lengthen when pulled. 

  • To lengthen by pulling. 

  • To pull tight. 

  • To extend one’s limbs or another part of the body in order to improve the elasticity of one's muscles 

  • To extend to a limit point 

  • To sail by the wind under press of canvas. 

  • To make inaccurate by exaggeration. 

  • To increase. 

  • To extend physically, especially from limit point to limit point. 

stretching

noun
  • The act by which something is stretched. 

  • A form of physical exercise in which a specific skeletal muscle (or muscle group) is deliberately elongated to its fullest length in order to improve the muscle's felt elasticity and reaffirm comfortable muscle tone. 

adj
  • Requiring a high level of effort or performance. 

How often have the words stretch and stretching occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )