STRAITS • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Straits

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/streɪts/ Listen

noun

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." "Honor travels in a strait so narrow Where one but goes abreast."

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."

3.

A neck of land; an isthmus. (R.) "A dark strait of barren land."

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." "Let no man, who owns a Providence, grow desperate under any calamity or strait whatsoever." "Ulysses made use of the pretense of natural infirmity to conceal the straits he was in at that time in his thoughts."

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Etymology of 'Straits'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Straits" Quotes from Famous Books

... employed was a musical instrument maker, named Whiteside. The work was begun in 1772, and persevered with until it was finished. In the beginning of the year 1777, Whiteside and his companions found themselves in great straits, and they wrote a letter and put it inside a barrel, and sent it afloat, hoping it would reach ...

— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... of the Sultan's direct control; the entire independence of Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro; a territorial and pecuniary indemnity to Russia for the expenses of the war; and "an ulterior understanding for safeguarding the rights and interests of Russia in the Straits." ...

— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... battle of Tsushima Straits, Russian and Japanese ships had fought at three and four thousand yards and closed into much shorter range. Since then, we had had the new method of marksmanship. Tsushima ceased to be a criterion. The Dogger Bank multiplied the range by five. A hundred years since England, all the while the most ...

— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... books without equivocation, they will gradually cease to be used in home instruction, and the coming generations will grow up without their holy influence. This state of things ought not to have been brought upon us. The reverent reading of the Bible alone would never have led us into such straits. It is the old story of all human reverence. That which we revere, we exaggerate. Glamor gathers around it. The symbol is identified with the spiritual reality. The image becomes an idol. The wonderful thing becomes a fetish. So we end in an ...

— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... drizzling afternoon, with the beginnings of a sea fog which hid the Asiatic shores of the straits. It wasn't easy to find open ground for a gallop, for there were endless small patches of cultivation and the gardens of country houses. We kept on the high land above the sea, and when we reached a bit of ...

— Greenmantle • John Buchan

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