STRAIT-LACED • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Strait-laced

"Strait-laced" Quotes from Famous Books

... many. He and Hawthorne were both fishermen, and the two used to set themselves afloat in the summer afternoons. "Strange and happy times were those," exclaims the more distinguished of the two writers, "when we cast aside all irksome forms and strait-laced habitudes, and delivered ourselves up to the free air, to live like the Indians or any less conventional race, during one bright semicircle of the sun. Rowing our boat against the current, between wide meadows, we turned aside into the Assabeth. A more lovely stream than this, for ...

— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... Acton, very seriously, "I've been an arrant cad since I've come to St. Amory's, and if those horses hadn't bolted with your mater I should never have seen in you anything but a strait-laced prig, as I've all along thought you. I have, really. But that's all changed now, and I'm going to dry up. I suppose you know you aren't popular among the ...

— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... tries openly to reform and guide them—if I should say plainly, Such and such are your faults; such and such places and associations are full of danger—they would be angry or disgusted, or they would say I was blue and strait-laced, and had an old woman's notions of what a man should be. I must coax them, as you say; I must disguise my medicines, and apply my remedies almost without their knowing it. I also find it true in my practice that tonics and good wholesome diet are better than all moral drugs. ...

— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

Words linked to "Strait-laced" : prim, straightlaced, square-toed, straitlaced, proper, victorian, tight-laced, straight-laced, prudish