strait /ˈstret/
海峽,困難(a.)困難的,窘迫的,狹窄的
Strait a. A variant of Straight. [Obs.]
Strait a. [Compar. Straiter superl. Straitest.]
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. [Obs.] “A strait degree of favor.”
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. [Obs.]
I beg cold comfort, and you are so strait,
And so ingrateful, you deny me that. --Shak.
Strait adv. Strictly; rigorously. [Obs.]
Strait, n.; pl. Straits
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. Specifically: 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. [R.]
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.
Strait, v. t. To put to difficulties. [Obs.]
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strait
adj : strict and severe; "strait is the gate"
n 1: a narrow channel of the sea joining two larger bodies of
water [syn: sound]
2: a bad or difficult situation or state of affairs [syn: pass,
straits]