A dark strait of barren land.
Tennyson.
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.
Phil. i. 23.
Let no man, who owns a Providence, grow desperate under any
calamity or strait whatsoever.
South.
Ulysses made use of the pretense of natural infirmity to conceal
the straits he was in at that time in his thoughts.
Broome.
Strait, v. t. To put to difficulties. [Obs.] Shak.
Strait"en (?), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Straitened (?); p. pr. & vb. n.
Straitening.] 1. To make strait; to make narrow; hence, to contract; to
confine.
Waters, when straitened, as at the falls of bridges, give a roaring
noise.
Bacon.
In narrow circuit, straitened by a foe.
Milton.