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. --Shak.
3. Close; intimate; near; familiar. [Obs.] ``A strait degree
of favor.'' --Sir P. Sidney.
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.
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.