Strait

Definition of Strait

a.	1.	A variant of Straight.
	1.	Narrow; not broad. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. - Matt. vii. 14. Too strait and low our cottage doors. - Emerson.
	2.	Tight; close; closely fitting.
	3.	Close; intimate; near; familiar.
	4.	Strict; scrupulous; rigorous. Some certain edicts and some strait decrees. - Shak. The straitest sect of our religion. - Acts xxvi. 5 (Rev. Ver.).
	5.	Difficult; distressful; straited. To make your strait circumstances yet straiter. - Secker.
	6.	Parsimonious; niggargly; mean. I beg cold comfort, and you are so strait, And so ingrateful, you deny me that. - Shak.
adv.	1.	Strictly; rigorously.
n.	1.	A narrow pass or passage. He brought him through a darksome narrow strait To a broad gate all built of beaten gold. - Spenser. Honor travels in a strait so narrow Where one but goes abreast. - Shak.
	2.	(Geog.) A (comparatively) narrow passageway connecting two large bodies of water; - often in the plural; as, the strait, or straits, of Gibraltar; the straits of Magellan; the strait, or straits, of Mackinaw. We steered directly through a large outlet which they call a strait, though it be fifteen miles broad. - De Foe.
	3.	A neck of land; an isthmus. A dark strait of barren land. - Tennyson.
	4.	Fig.: A condition of narrowness or restriction; doubt; distress; difficulty; poverty; perplexity; - sometimes in the plural; as, reduced to great straits. For I am in a strait betwixt two. - Phil. i. 23. Let no man, who owns a Providence, grow desperate under any calamity or strait whatsoever. - South. Ulysses made use of the pretense of natural infirmity to conceal the straits he was in at that time in his thoughts. - Broome.
v. t.	1.	To put to difficulties.

Related Words

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