Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The act of passing the hand over a surface.
  • noun plural The last milk drawn from a cow, pressed out by gentle stroking; strippings.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of rubbing gently with the hand, or of smoothing; a stroke.
  • noun (Needlework) The act of laying small gathers in cloth in regular order.
  • noun See Stripping, 2.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of stroke.
  • noun The act by which something is stroked.
  • noun textiles The act of laying small gathers in cloth in regular order.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a light touch with the hands

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • It reads like you are more interested in stroking your ego than responding to criticism. —

    We Had Better Get Our Next Book Out: John DiNardo Is Getting Bored - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com 2008

  • And I certainly don't recall feeling like I succeeded particularly in stroking my own ego by emblazoning every found object in my room (and the laundry) with my scarlet letter Gs. To this day I am still attracted to things with the letter G on them.

    Something new every day. 2003

  • And I certainly don't recall feeling like I succeeded particularly in stroking my own ego by emblazoning every found object in my room (and the laundry) with my scarlet letter Gs. To this day I am still attracted to things with the letter G on them.

    Archive 2003-11-01 2003

  • Sending out "mixed messages" that arouse interest, deliberately fishing about to see if we can get a little "stroking" - this is toxic, manipulative, adolescent.

    Hugo Schwyzer Hugo Schwyzer 2010

  • What a number of men go to India with the best intentions, and set to work at once, flinging their doctrines at the natives before they have learnt in the least to understand what the said natives 'minds are like, or how they work, -- dropping at once upon their pet prejudices, mortally offending them as a preliminary step towards arguing with them; and in short, stroking the cat of society backwards in the most conscientious manner.

    Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern Edward Burnett Tylor

  • I don’t expect a bald, scarred supervillain stroking his cat in every Bond film, but I do like it when the two seem like they are evenly matched, either in wits, physicality, or both.

    Movie Review: Quantum of Solace | /Film 2008

  • Rove’s grand plan was to spend the first three years of Bush’s term stroking conservatives’ erogenous zones–lots of tax cuts, conservative judges, regulatory rollbacks, and religiously hued social policy the administration’s marriage initiative, its efforts to restrict access to abortion, its retrograde stem cell research policies, etc.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Inside Base-ball 2004

  • It is performed in many ways namely stroking with palms of one hand, stroking with palms of two hands, the ball of the thumb, the knuckles and the finger tips.

    Benefits of Massage for Human Health 2009

  • It turns out that this recommendation is likely to cause a condition known as short-stroking, which is when the disk head only moves over a small portion of the platter instead of the full distance.

    2005 May 2005

  • It turns out that this recommendation is likely to cause a condition known as short-stroking, which is when the disk head only moves over a small portion of the platter instead of the full distance.

    Ecubed, Day 2: Getting more out of NTBackup; Jetstress UI 2005

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