STRAITS • DICTIONARY ONE.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

... different times afterwards accompanied his rival, either as captains or pilots of his expeditions. Notable among these was Vicente Yanez Pinzon, one of the noble family that came to the rescue of Columbus when in straits at Palos, and furnished the funds with which the impecunious navigator provided and equipped the vessel he had promised his sovereigns to contribute. The Pinzons actually provided and manned this vessel, the Nina, though Columbus ...

— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober

... the Dardanelles, Strait of Gibraltar, access to the Panama and Suez Canals; strategic straits include the Strait of Dover, Straits of Florida, Mona Passage, The Sound (Oresund), and Windward Passage; the Equator divides the Atlantic Ocean into the North Atlantic Ocean and South ...

— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... paper, verbatim, and a copious abstract of its contents. The earliest account of the horrors it relates is to be found in Smith's History, p. 105, in what is called "the examinations of Doctor Simons." This writer gives full details of the straits to which the Colonists were reduced and the expedients to which they resorted to appease hunger in 1609; adding, after the statements in regard to eating the Indian who had been buried several days and their eating "one another boyled, ...

— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... the most important commissioner, is well known, and also the financial straits of the country at that time. That Jones was in a difficult position at Brest is certain, and he perhaps asked for no more than he needed. But that he was naturally inclined to extravagant expenditure ...

— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... summer, was gone, and in its place were capricious winds and murky skies which made the time of arriving anywhere extremely problematical. We started on the first of the ebb, and as we slipped down the Carquinez Straits, I looked my last for some time upon Benicia and the bight at Turner's Shipyard, where we had besieged the Lancashire Queen, and had captured Big Alec, the King of the Greeks. And at the mouth of the Straits I looked with not a little interest upon the spot where a few ...

— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

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