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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."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Strait" Quotes from Famous Books



... Pillors. The rocky capes on either side of the Strait of Gibraltar. It was said that Hercules erected them to mark the western limit ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... ill-boding parchment; 'writs,' With hieroglyphics mystical inscribed; Invention curious of graceless men, And in sad mock'ry named 'the grace of God!' What mighty 'suits at law,' begot and born Within thy strait enclosure, yet survive Thy tenth successor! And what mighty 'suits In chancery,' (so named from CHANCE, who sits Alternate there and in the legal courts,) Still flourish, endless as the heap of words Which mark the spot where Justice ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... our Lady had heard her Petition, To Gabriel, the Angel, she strait gave Commission; She pluck'd off her Smock from her Shoulders Divine, And charg'd him to hasten to England's fair Queen. "Go to the Royal Dame, To give her the same, And bid her for ever to praise my Great Name, For I, in her ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... Greville, Miss Briskett stood as a type of all that was narrow, conventional, and depressing. As much as she could trouble herself to dislike any woman outside her own world, she disliked the rigid, strait-laced spinster, and was fully aware that the dislike was returned. Miss Briskett invariably declined the yearly invitations which were doled out to her in company with the other townsfolk, satisfied that in so doing she proclaimed a dignified disapproval of the ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Indies. In fact, in point of density of population and general prosperity, it takes the first place. On the east, the Lesser Antilles extend in a curve toward Trinidad, on the South American coast, inclosing on the westward the Caribbean sea. A strait of seventy miles separates Porto Rico from Hayti on the west, and the distances from San Juan, the capital, to other points are 2,100 miles to the Cape Verde Islands, 1,050 miles to Key West and 1,420 miles to ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... was not so strait but that unsuspected persons could get in and out, but after all, the poor Queen's anxiety and suspense were such that Lord Jermyn was forced to disclose the truth to her before Sir Andrew came back with the letters. She stood like a statue, and could neither move nor speak ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great! Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, And long accustomed bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilom did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae's sepulchral strait— Oh, who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Euro'ta's banks, and call thee from ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... We bless thee as most full of grace, who didst give birth to Christ, God and Man. And we fall down before thee. We all invoke thee and implore thy help. Deliver us, O Virgin, holy and undefiled, from every pressing strait and from all temptations of the Evil One. Be thou our peacemaker in the hour of death and judgment. Do thou save us from the future unquenchable fire and from the outer darkness. Do thou render us worthy of the glory of thy Son, O Virgin and Mother, most ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... subdued the tribes they found in possession of the soil, and the lands were all parcelled off among the chief's kinsfolk, the indigenous proprietors being subjected to payment of a land tax, but not otherwise degraded. When the land grew too strait for the support of the chief's family or of the sept—that is, when there were no vacant allotments, a landless son of the chief would assemble a band, and set forth to make ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... of the Transmundane Telegraphic Company, which will afford important aid in continuing the proposed line through British America. The plan is, to carry the wires from the mouth of the Amoor across Behring's Strait, to and through Russian and British America. From Victoria a branch will be extended to San Francisco, and another to Canada. The line from San Francisco to Missouri is under way, and Mr. Collins, who is engaged in the Russian and Canadian enterprise, thinks that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... French gestures, and laments the lost glories of the old French regime, and affects to forget the simplest English words. He doesn't know a word of French, however. But when his madness comes on, and he is put into a strait-waistcoat, all his English comes back, and very strong, fluent, idiomatic English it is, of the cockneyest kind, with ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... themselves out to be. In that conversation he professed to thank me for certain good offices I had done him and his, and waxing warm in his gratitude, confessed that without my interference he would have found himself in a strait of no ordinary seriousness; "For," said he, "there has been no over-statement of the feelings I cherished toward my sister-in-law, nor was there any mistake made in thinking that she uttered some very desperate threats ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... by grace of thy spirit, a flower for a weed. Thy spirit, unfelt of thy priests who blasphemed thee, enthralled and enticed To deathward a child that was even as the child we behold in Christ. The Moors, they told her, beyond bright Spain and the strait brief sea, Dwelt blind in the light that for them was as darkness, and knew not thee. But the blood of the martyrs whose mission was witness for God, they said, Might raise to redemption the souls that were here, in the sun's sight, dead. And the child rose up in the night, when the ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... passage is blind and stifled That crawls by a track none turn to climb To the strait waste place that the years have rifled Of all but the thorns that are touched not of Time. The thorns he spares when the rose is taken; The rocks are left when he wastes the plain. The wind that wanders, the weeds ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... that he may get off! Oh, what shall I do if he doesn't! How can I enjoy my wedding to-morrow! How can I bear the music and the dancing and the rejoicing, when I know that a fellow creature is in such a strait! Oh, Lord grant that Black Donald may get clear off to-night, for he isn't fit to die!" said Cap to herself, as she hurried out ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... is tyranny," and that "governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed." If these phrases are anything more than the meaningless utterances of demagogues, anything more than the hypocritical apologies of rebellious colonies in a strait—then we submit that a prima facie case for woman's right to vote has already been made out. To declare that a voice in the government is the right of all, and then give it to less than half, and that to the fraction to which the theorist ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of those numerous lagoons with black waters, which are distributed along the course of the Amazon, and which often have no communication with the river. One of these, bearing the name of the Lagoon of Oran, is of fair size, and receives the water by a large strait. In the middle of the stream are scattered several islands and two or three islets curiously grouped; and on the opposite bank Benito recognized the site of the ancient Oran, of which they could only see a ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... windows of a mansion which he knew well, and in which, in happier days, he had passed gay and pleasant hours. Every eye of that group, with but one exception, was fixed upon himself, as he perceived on the instant; the lady alone having turned her head away, as unable to look upon one in such a strait, whom she had known under circumstances so widely different. There was nothing, however, in the gaze of all these earnest eyes that seemed to embarrass, much less to offend the prisoner. Deep interest, earnestness, perhaps horror, was expressed by one and all; but that horror ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe was secretly vain of her child. She had long since, poor woman, forced down the strong strait-waistcoats of prudery and restraint over every other moral weakness but this—of all vanities the most beautiful; of all human failings surely the most pure! Yes, she was proud of Zack! The dear, naughty, handsome, church-disturbing, door-kicking, house-flooding ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... Mohammedan converted to Christianity, who is advised by the missionary to choose one of his two wives to have and to hold as a lawful spouse. When one has given his heart to Henry Esmond and the Heart of Midlothian he is in a strait, and begins to doubt the expediency of literary monogamy. Of course, if it go by technique and finish, then Esmond has it, which from first to last in conception and execution is an altogether lovely book; and if it go by heroes—Esmond and Butler—then again ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren

... sand and dust storms in summer; scarcity of natural freshwater resources; overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification Note: controls Bab el Mandeb, the strait linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, one of world's ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... all joys crowned, within doth sit: O goddess, pity love, and pardon it!" Thus spake she[67] weeping: but her goddess' ear Burn'd with too stern a heat, and would not hear. Ay me! hath heaven's strait fingers no more graces For such as Hero[68] than for homeliest faces? Yet she hoped well, and in her sweet conceit Weighing her arguments, she thought them weight, And that the logic of Leander's beauty, And them together, would bring proofs of duty; 390 And if her soul, that was ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... of Emigration and the Department of Charities and Corrections. It is separated from New York by the Harlem River, from Blackwell's and Long islands by that portion of the East River known as Hell Gate, and from Randall's Island by a narrow strait called Little Hell Gate. It lies a little to the northeast of Blackwell's Island, about half a mile from it, and is the widest of the three ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... — The Beagle sailed from Maldonado, and on August the 3rd she arrived off the mouth of the Rio Negro. This is the principal river on the whole line of coast between the Strait of Magellan and the Plata. It enters the sea about three hundred miles south of the estuary of the Plata. About fifty years ago, under the old Spanish government, a small colony was established here; and it is still the most southern position (lat. 41 degs.) on this ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... of her tongue, And forth, with eager joy, she sprung. As swift her ent'ring consort flew, And plum'd, and kindled at the view. Their wings, their souls, embracing, meet, Their hearts with answ'ring measure beat, Half lost in sacred sweets, and bless'd With raptures felt, but ne'er express'd. Strait to her humble roof she led The partner of her spotless bed; Her young, a flutt'ring pair, arise, Their welcome sparkling in their eyes, Transported, to their sire they bound, And hang, with speechless action, round. In pleasure wrapt, the parents stand, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding

... old name, Euboea. It looks like a piece broken off from the coast, and to the north is shaped like the head of a bird, with the beak running into a gulf, that would fit over it, upon the main land, and between the island and the coast is an exceedingly narrow strait. The Persian army would have to march round the edge of the gulf. They could not cut straight across the country, because the ridge of mountains called Oeta rose up and barred their way. Indeed, the woods, rocks, and precipices came down so near ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... need Some future state revealed to us by Zeus, Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire of joy, —To seek which the joy-hunger forces us: That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait On purpose to make prized the life at large— Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death, We burst there as the worm into the fly. Who, while a worm still, wants his wings. But no! Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas, He must have done ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... Through this rim the waters of the great Indian Ocean have cut a channel. The crater has thus become a beautiful salt lake, a mile in diameter, clear, deep, almost circular, and from whose border, on every side, rise the old volcanic walls draped in verdure. The strait connecting it with the sea is but three hundred feet wide, and at high tide ten feet deep,—thus affording an easy passage for small vessels into this most delightful seclusion; and no doubt the strait might be so deepened as to float the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... could perceive the danger, was entangled among these adverse currents and tempestuous waves; and it was with the utmost difficulty that he escaped through a narrow strait, which appeared so tremendous, that he called it ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich

... down into the fields with shepherd Eli to-night," explained Ezra politely. "Wilt thou not let me pass through the strait gate? Just this once! I will never ask thee again. Old Eli is thy friend and mine. Do the favor for him, I beg of thee, and I will bless ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips

... that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it was certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range, was not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights. She had admirers enough in the green-room, but awakened no abiding affection among the audience. In this strait, it occurred to her that she had a voice,—a contralto of no very great compass or cultivation, but singularly sweet and touching; and she finally obtained position in a church-choir. She held it for three months, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte

... good for evil; do not treat me as Imama formerly treated Ateca." "And what did Imama to Ateca?" inquired the fisherman. "Ho!" cried the genie, "if you have a mind to be informed, open the vessel: do you think that I can be in a humour to relate stories in so strait a prison? I will tell you as many as you please, when you have let me out." "No," said the fisherman, "I will not let thee out; it is in vain to talk of it; I am just going to throw thee into the bottom of the sea." "Hear me one word more," cried the genie; ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... three days after she had thus bidden us to her side, Sister Margaret entered into her rest; she had been our strait but gentle teacher, and her learning was as far above that of most women of her time as the heavens are high; and as her mortal body lay, no longer bent, but at full length in the coffin, the saintly lady, who before she took the vows had been a Countess of Lupfen, belonged, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... o'erspanned the bluer strait Which parts Icaria from Samos, fell, Amid the silent wonder of the air, Fell with a shock that startled the still wave, A shrivelled wreck of crisp, entangled plumes, A head whence eagles' beaks had plucked the eyes, And clots ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... gone forth to the world lie undisturbed—he would effect such a deliverance for himself as he had never hoped for, and open up an opportunity of which till now he had never dreamed. Whether the conjuncture had arisen through any unscrupulous, ill-considered impulse of Charlson to help out of a strait the friend who was so kind as never to press him for what was due could not be told; there was nothing to prove it; and it was a question which could never be asked. The triangular situation—himself—his wife—Lucy ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... see myself, in that dreadful old wincey dress and faded sailor hat, exploring decks and cabins with enraptured curiosity. It was a fine evening; and how those red Island shores did gleam in the sunshine. Now I'm crossing the strait again. Oh, Gilbert, I do hope I'll like Redmond and Kingsport, ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... near, Teach me still Thy voice to hear; Suffer not my step to stray From the strait and narrow way. Where Thou leadest may I go, Walking in Thy steps below; Then before Thy Father's throne, Jesus, claim ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various

... venture therefore to advance during the night, but tacked with sails reefed, waiting the break of day. At midnight we had some violent squalls from the north with a ruffled sea, but not amounting to a storm. The rising sun discovered to us the three high Richmond rocks, rising in the middle of the strait, between the Bashi and Babuyan Islands. Soon after the island of Bantan appeared, with heavy clouds still lingering behind its cliffs. The weather was, however, at present fine, the wind blowing strongly from the north; we therefore set as much sail as the gale would permit us to ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... 164: Mauna-ole. According to one authority this should be Mauna-Hilo. Verses 13, 14, 16, and 17 are difficult of translation. The play on the words ku a, standing at, or standing by, and kua, the back; also on the word kowa, a gulf or strait; and the repetition of the word mauna, mountain—all this is carried to such an extent as to be quite unintelligible to the Anglo-Saxon mind, though full ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... not submit to the advantage thus gained by its commercial rival without an effort. It listened to the representations of one Ferdinand Magellan, that India and the Spice Islands could be reached by sailing to the west, if only a strait or passage through what had now been recognized as "the American Continent" could be discovered; and, if this should be accomplished, Spain, under the papal bull, would have as good a right to the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... prepared to fish, but even in their peculiar strait he could not refrain from looking longingly at plant, insect, and bird, especially at a great bunch of orchids which were ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... may here have wood, water, rice, buffaloes, goats, hens, plantains, and fresh fish, but all very dear. Having dispatched our business, we weighed anchor on the 28th September, and stood for Bantam. The 23d October, we came to anchor in the road of Marrah in the strait of Sunda, where we took in fresh water. In this place there is great plenty of buffaloes, goats, hens, ducks, and many other good things for refreshment; and the people do not esteem money so much in payment, as white and painted calicoes, and such like stuffs. If well used, these people ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... and displeasure in those holy eyes, we must nevertheless approach them just and simply as we are. We must say with king David in a similar case, when he had incurred the displeasure of God: "I am in a great strait; [yet] let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for very great are his mercies" (1 Chron. xx. 13). We must suffer the intolerable brightness to blind and blast us in our guiltiness, and let there be an actual contact between the sin of our soul and the holiness of our God. If we thus proceed, in ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... No one knew that it was possible to reach Asia by sailing around the southern point of Africa or through what is called the Strait of Magellan. The products of the East were brought to Europe by several routes, two reaching the Mediterranean at Alexandria, in Egypt, a third at Antioch, in Syria, and a fourth on the southeastern shore ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... side of the plait inwards, and, in consequence, young Teddy when he first sat down felt rather uncomfortable. "What's the matter wid ye, Teddy; what makes ye wriggle about in that way? Sit aisy, man; sure enough, havn't ye a strait-bottomed chair to sit down upon all the rest of your journey, which is more than your father ever had before you?" And then their turning in for the night! A single bed will contain one adult and four little ones at one end, and another adult and two half-grown at the other. But they are all ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... they are made, forgot as soon As done, Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honor bright. To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery. Take the instant way; For Honor travels in a strait so narrow, Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path; For Emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue: if you give way, Or hedge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an entered tide, they all ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... river Baetis, Laelius in the mean time, sailing out of the straits into the ocean, came with his fleet before Carteia, a city situated on the coast of the ocean, where the sea begins to expand itself, after being confined in a narrow strait. He had entertained hopes of having Gades betrayed to him without a contest, persons having come unsolicited into the Roman camp to make promises to that effect, as has been before mentioned. The ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... can't," said the Count, who stood hard by. "My island was in the Mediterranean, and even if it dragged anchor it couldn't have got out through the Strait of Gibraltar." ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... fallen into a great strait," says Gunnar, "and slain many men, and I wish to know what thou wilt ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... under the existing coercive policy, this request was of course inadmissible. At this time the company had in its warehouses upwards of seventeen millions of pounds, in addition to which the importations of the current year were expected to be larger than usual. To such a strait was it reduced, that it could neither pay its dividends nor ...
— Tea Leaves • Various

... your brow a starry wreath, About your feet a wilderness, Where young hot hopes grow cold beneath The tangled bondage of the press. Set like a saint within a niche— A strait and narrow niche—you hide, And weave a veil about you, which Can turn our steel, Saint ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson

... United States Government has since rebuilt it in stone, that visitors to the Soo may turn from the massive new locks, through which steel steamships of eight thousand tons pass all day long through the summer months, to gaze on the strait and narrow gate which once opened the way for all the commerce of Lake Superior. But through that gate there passed a picturesque and historic procession. Canoes spurred along by tufted Indians with black-robed Jesuit missionaries for passengers; the wooden bateaux of the fur ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... so much to say about Gibraltar that I omitted all mention of the Strait, and more distant shores of Spain and Barbary, which form the extreme of our present horizon; they are highly interesting. A chain of distant mountains sweep round Gibraltar, bold peaked, well defined, and deeply indented; the most distinguishable ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... hoist; With upside down, doom'd there to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack, which had almost Lost, by disuse, the art to roast, A sudden alteration feels, Increas'd by new intestine wheels; And strait against the steeple rear'd, Became a clock, and still adher'd; And, now, in love to household cares, By a shrill voice the hour declares, Warning the housemaid not to burn The roast-meat which it cannot turn. The easy chair began to crawl, Like a huge snail along the wall; There, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... of shipboard and of stations in the colonies, bad servants, and unwonted sicknesses, the Captain's tenderness never failed. If the life was rough the Captain was ready. He had been, by turns, in one strait or another, sick-nurse, doctor, carpenter, nursemaid, and cook to his family, and had, moreover, an idea that nobody filled these offices quite so well as himself. Withal, his very profession kept him neat, well-dressed, and ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... evil genius had whispered, or rather trumpeted, into his ear—for he had but one left, and that worked very seldom, through alarm about the bullet which had carried off its fellow—that if he desired, as he did with heart and stomach, to get a clear widening by 200 pounds of his strait ways and restricted means, through Admiral Darling it might be done, and Miss Dolly was the proper one to make him do it. For the Inspectorship of Sea-Fencibles from Selsea-Bill to Dungeness was worth all that money in hard cash yearly; and the late ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... day. As I was expressly asked whether I did not regard such a token as a sign of grace both in the giver and in the receiver, I said that I thought it should neither have been given nor have been taken. My theory was repudiated with scorn, and I was told that I was strait-laced, visionary, and impracticable! In all that the damage did not lie in the fact of that one present, but in the feeling on the part of the critic that his office was not debased by the acceptance of presents from those whom he criticised. This man was a professional critic, bound by his contract ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... sailed up the Strait of Detroit he kept his impressions for after travelers and historians, by transcribing them in his journal. It was not only the romantic side, but the usefulness of the position that appealed to him, commanding the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... peradventure also such a synod is to be hoped for, surely it is to be wished that, for defending the orthodox faith, both against Popery and other heresies, as also for propagating it to those who are without, especially the Jews, a more strait and more firm consociation may be entered into. For the unanimity of all the churches, as in evil it is of all things most hurtful, so on the contrary side, in good it is most pleasant, most profitable, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... unmolested on its picturesque borders. But channels, and islands, and rocky shores have echoed and re-echoed with the war-shouts of many a fierce sea-rover since those far-off days when Olaf, the boy viking, and his Norwegian ships of war plowed through the narrow sea-strait, and ravaged the fair shores of the Maelar ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... Islands hove up above the horizon, at which moment, as it happened, Nakamura and I were in the captain's cabin, where indeed we had spent most of the time of late, when we were not in our bunks. The Hanish Islands are, roughly speaking, within about one hundred miles of the Strait of Bab el Mandeb; and as we had not been interfered with thus far, we had practically made up our minds that if the Russians intended to molest us at all, it would be here, the back of the islands affording an excellent place of concealment from which to dash out upon ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... without serious danger. Necessity knows no law, however, and when all the circumstances of this battle are fully considered it is possible that justification may be found for the manoeuvres by which the army was thus drifted to the left. We were in a bad strait unquestionably, and under such conditions possibly the exception had to be applied ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan

... were driving their prey, the Turks prevailed over the Christians, and the plunder was recovered. On receiving this intelligence, Hugh, who happened to be at some distance, hastened with his cavalry to succour his footmen, and to recover the spoil: But happening to fall in with the Turks in a strait and craggy place, and rushing heedlessly among the enemy, unprovided with his armour, he was shot in the back by an arrow, which pierced his liver, and he died on the spot. His soldiers brought back the dead body of Hugh to the city of Nazareth near Mount Thabor, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... fooled; so what shift shall avail unto me? If any could ease me of love and its stress, Of my might and my virtue I'd set myself free. But alas! my heart's lost in maze of desire, And no helper save God in my strait can ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... crowns of snow in the morning light. The town is stirring with faint commotion, In all its highways it throbs and thrills; We greet you! Queen of the Western Ocean, As you wake to life on your hundred hills. The forts salute, and the flags are streaming From ships at anchor in cove and strait; O'er the mountain tops, in splendor beaming, The sun looks ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... lads; it's all right!" they found the widow Marston with confusion and happiness beaming on her countenance, and the Wild Man himself in a condition that fully justified Bounce's suggestion that they had better send for a strait-waistcoat or a pair of handcuffs. As for March, he had all along been, and still was, speechless. That the Wild Man of the West was Dick, and Dick the Wild Man of the West, and that both should come home at the same time in one ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... current within the tropics, and particularly in the vicinity of the equator. This volume of water is thus forced along the shores of Brazil and Guiana, until it enters the Caribbean Sea, from which it has no outlet excepting through the strait bounded by Cape Catouche in Yucatan, on one side, and Cape St. Antonio, in Cuba, on ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... to be done!" he said, feeling the utter helplessness of doubt in such a pressing strait; "desert me not, for God's sake! remain to defend those I escort, and ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... Alpine experts. At low water a causeway of rocks joins it to the mainland, but at half-tide even it is impassable, except in a boat on a calm day. On a windy day such a strong tide rushes through the strait that a boat would be swept away in the attempt to cross, although the distance is only four or five hundred feet. The narrowness of the channel makes the ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... to him. They vowed it, gave it out and took it in, drawn, by their intensity, more closely together. Then of a sudden, through this tightened circle, as at the issue of a narrow strait into the sea beyond, everything broke up, broke down, gave way, melted and mingled. Their lips sought their lips, their pressure their response and their response their pressure; with a violence that had sighed itself the next moment to the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... of the characteristic features of Long Island, Smyth, the traveler already quoted, mentions what seemed to him "two very extraordinary places." "The first," he says, "is a very dangerous and dreadful strait or passage, called Hell-Gates, between the East River and the Sound; where the two tides meeting cause a horrible whirlpool, the vortex of which is called the Pot, and drawing in and swallowing up every thing that approaches near it, dashes ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... American continent is a cluster of islands, which are dark, sterile, rocky, and most of the year covered with snow. Evergreens relieve the aspect of sterility, in places that are a little sheltered, and there is a meagre vegetation in spots that serve to sustain animal life. The first strait which separates this cluster of islands from the main, is that of Magellan, through which vessels occasionally pass, in preference to going farther south. Then comes Tierra del Fuego, which is much ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... me down by her buteful side— She'd a face like a sunset sky; Her hair was a sort of a scarlety red, And her knoze was strait ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... but yet, on the other hand, while the young creatures are engaged in this discipline, they have to suffer from others that which in them is reprimanded and punished. In this way the poor things are brought into a sad strait between the natural and civilized states, and, after restraining themselves for a while, break out, according to their ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... and Arthur sat Crowned on the dais, and his warriors cried, "Be thou the king, and we will work thy will Who love thee." Then the King in low deep tones, And simple words of great authority, Bound them by so strait vows to his own self, That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some Were pale as at the passing of a ghost, Some flushed, and others dazed, as one who wakes Half-blinded at the coming ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... a little French Protestant chapel; and Mlle. Genevieve and Mme. Ricard went to the Catholic church. The first Sunday I had gone with them, not knowing at all whither. I found that would not do; and since then I had tried the other parties. But I was in a strait; for Miss Maria's church seemed to me a faded image of Mlle. Genevieve's; the Presbyterian church which Miss Babbitt went to was stiff and dull; I was not at home in either of them, and could not understand or enjoy what ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... not easy, they told themselves, to get to know her. She did not talk much. But as Jane pointed out to Robert, little things came out, things that proved that she was all right. Her father was a country parson, very strait-laced, they gathered; and she had little sisters, years younger than herself. When she talked at all it was in a pretty, innocent way, like a child's, and all her little legends were, you could see, transparently consistent. They had, like a child's, a quite funny ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... the line between Holland and Germany, taking hold of that metaphorical pistol which you spent so many millions-to turn from your throat in the days of the first Napoleon. Nay, even should any woman-killing Sepoy put you to sore strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's friend, for the simple reason that ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... phonograph swear bitterly at a piano long past its prime. The final act of the drama of the day is performed on the hammock—an animated little sketch of arms and legs conducted along the lines of Houdini getting into a strait-jacket, or does he get out of them? I don't know, perhaps both. Anyway, you get what ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

... his shoulders—no wabblin' of his hind parts, but steady as a pump bolt, and the motion all underneath. When he fairly lays himself to it, he trots like all vengeance. Then look at his ear—jist like rabbit's; none o' your flop-ears like them Amherst beasts, half horses, half pigs, but strait up and p'inted, and not too near at the tips; for that 'ere, I consait, always shows a horse ain't true to draw. There are only two things, Squire, worth lookin' at in a horse, action and soundness; for I never saw a critter that had good action that was a bad beast. Old Clay puts ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... taken what might best be done. And for that the night approached, it was thought needful to land our forces, which was done in the shutting up of the day; and having quartered ourselves to our most advantage, with sufficient guard upon every strait, we thought to rest ourselves for that night there. The Governor sent us some refreshing, as bread, wine, oil, apples, grapes, marmalade and such like. About midnight the weather began to overcast, insomuch that ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs

... was in fact the inevitable order, caused by our hold on the army, to divide the fleet. Both officers as usual began to be upset, and as with Medina-Sidonia, they decided to keep company till they reached the Isle of Wight and remain there till they could get touch with Saxe and pilots for the Dover Strait. They were beset with the nervousness that seems inseparable from this form of operation. Roquefeuil explained to his Government that it was impossible to tell what ships the enemy had passed to the ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... aged herdsmen tell. There dwelt A mighty people in the land that lies Back to the north. The scourge of famine came; And in this strait 'twas publicly resolved, That each tenth man, on whom the lot might fall, Should leave the country. They obey'd—and forth, With loud lamentings, men and women went, A mighty host; and to the south moved on. Cutting their way through Germany ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... many angels at our call, And many blessed spirits who are bound To lend their aid in every strait and turn; And elves to fly the errands of the soul, And fairies all too glad to give us help, If we but know how to pronounce the spell Which calls them unto ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... collecting scientific information, they made for Sydney in order to repair their ships and gain relief for their many invalids. Thence, after incidents which will be noticed presently, they set sail in November, 1802, for Bass Strait and the coast beyond. They seem to have overlooked the entrance to Port Phillip—a discovery effected by Murray in 1801, but not made public till three years later—and failed to notice the outlet of the chief ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... of the water up to high-water mark, were covered with a vast growth of sea-weed, which luxuriated here, and ran parallel to the line of vegetation on the summit of the cliff. On the other side of the strait the scene was different. Here the shores were more varied; in one place, rising high on steep precipices, in others, thrusting forth black, rocky promontories into the deep channel; in others again, retreating far back, and forming bays, round whose ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille

... complete. Across the western end of it stretches like a bent bow, the long island of Finilaun. On the south, reaching almost to the point of Finilaun, is Craggeen, and between the two is a shallow strait. On the east is the mainland, broken and bitten into with long creeks and bays. On the north lies a chain of islands, Ilaunure, Curraunbeg and Curraunmor, separated from each other by narrow channels, through which the tide runs strongly in ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... sailors well armed with pistols, dirks, and cutlasses; and some of them carrying carbines slung at their backs. A general huzza followed: the two persons who had gone to the rear, each with seven or eight followers, ran severally to the right and left at right angles from the road strait up the steep hills which rose on each side; then making a short circuit they descended like a torrent in the rear of the revenue officers; swarmed with the agility of cats over their waggons, and from these upon the turnpike gate—whence they threw themselves ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... of the King of the confederated Nations, the Prince who will be king. He bows before the Lord Oro. He says 'Great and Ancient Monarch of the divine blood, Heaven-born One, your strait, and that of those who remain to you, is sore. Yet on behalf of the Nations I am sent to offer terms of peace, but this I may only do in the presence of your child who is your heiress and the Queen-to-be ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... that a necessary step towards reform "must be to impose the responsibility of the Civil Service upon the Executive." Senator Evarts argued that the existing law was incompatible with executive responsibility, for "it placed the Executive power in a strait-jacket." He then pointed out that the President had not the legal right to remove a member of his own Cabinet and asked, "Is not the President imprisoned if his Cabinet are to be his masters by the will of the Senate?" The debate was almost wholly confined to the Republican side ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford

... but for others. He destroyed lions, hydras, wild boars, birds with brazen beaks and wings, mad bulls, many-headed monsters, horses which fed on human flesh, dragons, he mastered the three-headed dog Cerberus, he tore asunder the rocks at the Strait of Gibraltar which bear his name to open a channel between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. He fought the Centaur and brought back Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, from the pale regions of death where she had gone to save her husband's ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... extremes of too much and of too little popular liberty; from monarchy, or military despotism, on one side, and from licentiousness and anarchy on the other. This always will be the case. The classical navigator had been told that he must pass a narrow and dangerous strait: ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... man of low caste. Ward has written, "If a European of the highest rank touch the food of a Hindoo of the lowest caste, the latter will instantly throw it away, although he may not have another morsel to allay the pangs of hunger";—but this is true only of certain very strait sects. There are numerous sects that admit proselytes from every caste; but at the same time they will not partake of food, except with those of their own religious party. "Here," says Kerr, "the spirit of sect has supplanted even the spirit of caste,"—as at the temple of Juggernath in Orissa, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... strait bore several dhows speeding in and out of the bay of Zanzibar with bellying sails. Towards the south, above the sea line of the horizon, there appeared the naked masts of several large ships, and to the east of these a dense mass of white, flat-topped ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... appreciation of the fact that the hold of the nobility over the capital would be weakened if their clients were allowed to don the armour which made them men, that had kept the senate within the strait limits of the antiquated rules. Fortunately, however, the methods of raising an army depended almost entirely on the discretion of the general engaged on the task. Did he employ the conscription in a manner not justified ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... stretches out to the straits. If the Welsh were once well posted there, the Irish could never hope to find their way to the rich and cultivated south, for it is just below Sypolis that the Lake contracts, and forms a strait in one place but a furlong wide. The two forces thus came into collision, and while they fought and destroyed each other, Sypolis was saved. After which, finding they were evenly matched, the Irish withdrew two days' march northwards, and the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... is thought that the descendants of this creature, and of the other "Old-World" forms above referred to, found their way to Asia, probably, as suggested by Professor Marsh, across a bridge at Bering Strait, to continue their evolution on the other hemisphere, becoming extinct in the land of their nativity. The ape-man fossil found in the tertiary strata of the island of Java in 1891 by the Dutch surgeon Dr. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... main land, inside the chain of reefs which encircles the island, and which she had passed through in a place where no vessel had ever passed before. She presented her head to the waves that rolled in from the open sea, and as each billow rushed into the narrow strait where she lay, her bow lifted to such a degree as to show her keel; and at the same moment her stern, plunging into the water, disappeared altogether from our sight, as if it were swallowed up by the surges. In this position, driven by the winds and waves towards the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... first to the island of Cape Breton, and then to the cape of that name, where the coast first takes a decided turn, from its easterly direction, to the north, and forms the westerly side of the strait leading into the gulf of St. Lawrence. This cape, according to the letter, is distant easterly one hundred and fifty, and fifty, leagues from the harbor in the great bay, distances which, for reasons already mentioned, are to be regarded as estimates only, but which taken exactly ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... layman's liberty? I think, according to my little skill, To my own Mother Church submitting still, That many have been saved, and many may, 320 Who never heard this question brought in play. Th' unletter'd Christian, who believes in gross, Plods on to heaven, and ne'er is at a loss; For the strait gate would be made straiter yet, Were none admitted there but men of wit. The few by nature form'd, with learning fraught, Born to instruct, as others to be taught, Must study well the sacred page; and see Which doctrine, this ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... "ye are an ass, my friend, and ken not the blessing Heaven has sent you in this braw callant.—And now tell me, Quentin, my man, hath the King any advice of this brave, Christian, and manly resolution of yours, for, poor man, he had need, in his strait, to ken what he has to reckon upon. Had he but brought the whole brigade of Guards with him!—But God's will be done.—Kens he of your ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... is the third largest of the world's five oceans (after the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean, but larger than the Southern Ocean and Arctic Ocean). Four critically important access waterways are the Suez Canal (Egypt), Bab el Mandeb (Djibouti-Yemen), Strait of Hormuz (Iran-Oman), and Strait of Malacca (Indonesia-Malaysia). The decision by the International Hydrographic Organization in the spring of 2000 to delimit a fifth ocean, the Southern Ocean, removed the portion of the Indian Ocean south of 60 ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... strait which separates the North African coast from Sicily were also colonised by the Phoenicians. These were three in number, Cossura (now Pantellaria), Gaulos (now Gozzo), and Melita (now Malta). Cossura, the most western ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson



Words linked to "Strait" :   Pas de Calais, Korea Strait, Bosporus, strait-laced, Skagerrak, narrow, channel, Canakkale Bogazi, Strait of Messina, Strait of Ormuz, Solent, Korean Strait, Strait of Hormuz, Golden Gate, desperate straits, Skagerak, Kammon Strait Bridge, Menai Strait, North Channel, Kattegatt, Strait of Dover, dire straits, archaism, sound, Bering Strait, strait and narrow, straits, Cook Strait, Torres Strait, Strait of Calais, Strait of Gibraltar



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