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Make Your Point > Archived Issues > STRAITEN

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pronounce STRAITEN:

STRATE 'n
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connect this word to others:

Today we're checking out the odd little word straiten, which comes the Latin strictus, meaning "tight or narrow," which goes further back to stringere, "to tighten: to draw or bind tightly." So, straiten belongs to a huge family of English words that all have something to do with tightening, like strict, strain, stress, restrict, constrict, constrain, and distress.

The first thing you probably notice about straiten is that it's a homophone of straighten.

Whenever I notice a pair of homophones, I have to find out: why do they sound the same? If they also look similar, why? Is it because they're closely related, or is it just a coincidence?

With straiten and straighten, it's probably a coincidence. Straighten comes from Old English streccan, "to stretch," while straiten comes from Latin stringere, "to tighten." And yeah, the two ideas are really similar, and while etymologists have hypothesized that streccan and stringere are from the same root, we don't know that for sure.

How about the homophones eminent and imminent: could you explain whether their similarity is coincidental or familial?

definition:

(Source)

There's the Strait of Gibraltar, jammed tightly between Europe and Africa. If the Atlantic Ocean wants to get into the Mediterranean Sea, or vice versa, it's gonna have to squeeze.

You might be most familiar with that kind of "strait," either the narrow channel of water or, figuratively, a tight, awkward, situation, as in "They're in dire straits," "They're in desperate straits," or "They're in serious financial straits."

"Strait" is also an adjective, meaning "tight, awkward, or constricting," although we hardly ever use it by itself. We still see it in terms like "straitjacket" and "straitlaced." A straitlaced bodice, for example, squeezes the wearer tightly; and a straitlaced person has very rigid behaviors, as if they're always tightly squeezed.

That brings us to the verb, "straiten." To straiten things or people is to squeeze them: to push them into tight, narrow, awkward situations, often financial ones (where they barely have enough money to get by).

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Verb, the transitive kind. You could use it straightforwardly, as in "They straitened their spending," or passively, as in "The Dollar Store aisles are straitened by heaps of product to be shelved."

But more often, we turn it into a past participle adjective: "a straitened budget," "their straitened spending," "these straitened aisles."

Other forms: 

The noun is "strait," often used in the plural: "Overspending and overborrowing put them in desperate straits."

how to use it:

"Straiten" is a formal, serious, semi-common word.

Most often, we use it to talk about tight, narrow, squeezed, uncomfortable financial situations: we talk about people being in straitened times or straitened circumstances, or having straitened means or straitened finances.

examples:

"Fast food is now so cheap and readily available that its consumption is associated more with straitened circumstances than with affluent ones, but that wasn't always the case."
   — Jennifer Szalai, New York Times, 8 January 2020

"The Associated Press Stylebook is the go-to guide for U.S. publications... Generally, its decisions tend toward loosening rather than straitening the rules. For instance, the A.P. accepts the singular 'they/their' (classic example: 'Everyone took their seat')."
  — Mary Norris, The New Yorker, 30 October 2019

has this page helped you understand "straiten"?

   

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.


study it:

Explain the meaning of "straiten" without saying "constrict" or "confine."

try it out:

Fill in the blank: "To (do something) can lead to a pretty straitened existence."

Example 1: "To blow half your paycheck every month on just rent can lead to a pretty straitened existence."

Example 2: "To live in fear of superstitions can lead to a pretty straitened existence."

Example 3, on the question of whether or not to let your paranoid cousin stop you from getting a DNA test to learn about your family history: "To let yourself be trammeled by hypothetical harms so indeterminate we can't even spell them out can lead to a pretty straitened existence."
   — Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Times, 5 April 2025




before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month: Poetic Connections!

Check out three snippets from a poem, along with three words we've studied—some beautiful, some outrageous—and decide which word you'll connect to each snippet. To see the definitions, highlight the hidden white text after each word. And to see an example, head here.

Try this set today:

"The Earthlings" by Matthew Olzmann

Snippets:

1. "The Earthlings arrived unannounced, entered
without knocking, removed their shoes 
and began clipping their toenails."

2. "This is too dry, they said.
This is not like what our mothers made."

3. "We wanted to offer a tour of our world, 
demonstrate how we freed ourselves 
from the prisons of linear time."

Words:
A. gaucherie (meaning... behavior that's socially awkward or cringey)
B. persnickety (meaning... too picky about small details)
C. Tralfamadorian (meaning... unaffected by worries about destiny or death)

To see one possible set of answers, scroll all the way down; if your answers don’t match these, that's fine: all that matters is that yours make sense to you.

review this word:

1. One opposite of STRAITEN is

A. TILT.
B. LOOSEN.
C. SCATTER.

2. The New York Times reported: "The last Prince of Grusinien has just died at St. Petersburg in very straitened circumstances. Of late years the Prince lived quite _____ in a suburb of the city."

A. poor
B. unwell
C. in seclusion




Answers to the review questions:
1. B
2. A

From the game:

I'd connect gaucherie to snippet 1 for the cringe-inducing faux pas, although snippet 2 would work great for this also; persnickety to snippet 2 because the Earthlings are being picky about their food; and Tralfamadorian to snippet 3 for the aliens' ability to travel through time at will.


a final word:


I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.

I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.


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A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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