How to Use strait in a Sentence

strait

1 of 2 noun
Definition of straitnext
Synonyms for straitnext
  • The Bosporus looked calm as the Gas Grouper, a 570-foot-long tanker, slipped into the strait.
    — Washington Post, 9 Jan. 2022
  • The strait connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, and the open ocean beyond.
    — Missy Ryan, Washington Post, 3 Aug. 2023
  • That doesn’t mean the standoff over the Taiwan strait is over.
    — Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, 22 Jan. 2024
  • The strait is only 20 miles wide and is bordered by Djibouti and Eritrea to the west and Yemen to the east.
    — Laris Karklis, Washington Post, 16 Dec. 2023
  • The state of war with the mainland was constant; sometimes the two sides shelled each other across the strait.
    — Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, 14 Nov. 2022
  • The only thing left of that craft, in the bottom of a strait in the Solomon Islands, was the torpedo tube.
    — Frederick Dreier, Outside Online, 30 Mar. 2022
  • Once the Persian fleet was massed inside the strait, their quarry turned and attacked, while the rest of the Greek fleet moved in from the flanks.
    — John Psaropoulos, WSJ, 3 Sep. 2020
  • The threat from across the 110-mile-wide strait to the west of the foundries menaces Taiwan every second of every day.
    — Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, 21 Mar. 2023
  • As the moon rose above the water, the Rafael Peralta motored toward the strait.
    — Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker, 14 Nov. 2023
  • That floating, fleeting bridge through the strait of Messina, the first and maybe the only, holds a lesson.
    — Gisela Salim-Peyer, The Atlantic, 11 Dec. 2023
  • But the project moved forward regardless of the even more dire straits of the property.
    — Steven Lindsey, Dallas News, 21 May 2023
  • The threat from across the strait, and the threat from anyone who might be even slightly allied with that threat, is ever-present.
    — Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, 21 Mar. 2023
  • Those Marines and sailors could provide the backbone for any armed guard mission in the strait, through which 20% of the world’s crude oil passes.
    — Lolita C. Baldor, Anchorage Daily News, 3 Aug. 2023
  • Every year, enough cargo passes through the strait to account for some ten per cent of the world’s trade.
    — The New Yorker, 4 Oct. 2021
  • The first train will supposedly cross the Messina strait in 2032.
    — Gisela Salim-Peyer, The Atlantic, 11 Dec. 2023
  • And what desperate straits or last-ditch hopes led to such an extreme step?
    — Brian Handwerk, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Feb. 2023
  • In contrast, across the strait in Taiwan, the government has rolled out a plan for the island to be bilingual by 2030.
    — Nectar Gan, CNN, 21 Sep. 2023
  • Outside, Óli's son harvested hay with a neighbor's tractor, and the sea grew rough in the strait.
    — Sarah Moss, Travel + Leisure, 20 Feb. 2022
  • US Navy ships have been transiting the strait roughly monthly, to the anger of Beijing.
    — Reuters, CNN, 23 Nov. 2021
  • The city enjoyed trade from both land and sea due to its excellent location on the strait.
    — Joshua Learn, Discover Magazine, 2 Nov. 2023
  • Russian reinforcements would need to traverse the strait to reach the Black Sea.
    — Jared Malsin, WSJ, 14 Sep. 2022
  • The week Krach was in Taipei, China sent a total of 37 war planes, including bombers and fighter jets, across the strait.
    — Elisha Maldonado, Washington Examiner, 5 Nov. 2020
  • Those Marines and sailors could provide the backbone for any armed guard mission in the strait, through which 20 percent of the world’s crude oil passes.
    — Lolita C. Baldor and Jon Gambrell, BostonGlobe.com, 3 Aug. 2023
  • Turkey controls the straits, which permit access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and points beyond.
    — Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY, 19 Apr. 2023
  • Iranian officials in the past have threatened to close the strait.
    — Jon Gambrell, Star Tribune, 6 Dec. 2020
  • But almost all iPhones are assembled just across the strait in China.
    — Chris Miller, The Atlantic, 28 Dec. 2022
  • Across the strait, a mountain soars up into a flattened peak, crenellated like the spine of a large dinosaur.
    — Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine, 20 July 2021
  • And as Blankfein notes, business owners and workers are in dire straits.
    — David Goldman, CNN, 22 May 2020
  • Which is why, when the H-6 bombers passed over the strait on Wednesday, fighters accompanied them.
    — David Axe, Forbes, 17 June 2021
  • Russia quickly reopened the strait and eventually returned the ships, but the moves laid bare Ukraine’s naval impotence.
    — Mark Cancian, Foreign Affairs, 8 Feb. 2024
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strait

2 of 2 adjective
  • Randy had a close friend, Robert, a more strait-laced gay man who was in his twenties and a reverend.
    — Michael Waters, The New Yorker, 28 Feb. 2021
  • As a judicial law clerk for the city, Alicia was worried that she’d be paired with a strait-laced lawyer.
    — Washington Post, 26 Aug. 2021
  • As the air and missile war rages, the invasion force would begin its cross-strait assault.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 21 Oct. 2021
  • Together, the weapons provide Taiwan with the means to deter or disrupt a cross-strait attack.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 29 Oct. 2020
  • Our lives in Taiwan do not revolve around cross-strait relations.
    — Clarissa Wei, CNN, 2 Aug. 2022
  • What would set them apart from their strait-laced European counterparts now?
    — Hazlitt, 20 Dec. 2022
  • He was widely known there as a studious, generally strait-laced young man.
    — New York Times, 5 Mar. 2021
  • China, meanwhile, has sent record numbers of war planes near Taiwan, as cross-strait tensions soared to their highest in recent decades.
    — Alex Rogers, CNN, 20 July 2022
  • That makes the prospect of negotiations to tamp down cross-strait tensions more unlikely.
    — Michael Schuman, The Atlantic, 10 Oct. 2020
  • Taiwan's defense minister has warned that cross-strait relations are at their worst in 40 years.
    — Clay Chandler and grady McGregor, Fortune, 16 Nov. 2021
  • And with it, the number of cross-strait extraditions have also plummeted.
    — Wayne Chang and Nectar Gan, CNN, 26 Nov. 2021
  • As a teenager in a fundamentalist church, Corinne idolizes strait-laced Enoch Miller, the eldest son of the people who brought her family into the fold.
    — Becky Meloan, Washington Post, 16 July 2022
  • One of the world's most important sea lanes, millions of barrels of oil and petroleum products pass through the strait daily, according to GlobalSecurity.org.
    — Brad Lendon and Steve George, CNN, 13 July 2017
  • The cars from Kenosha came with reclining seats, not for driving but for sleeping, and this seemed to give reclining seats a bad name forever in the strait-laced American heartland.
    — David E. Davis Jr., Car and Driver, 12 Jan. 2023
  • For decades an uneasy status quo governed cross-strait relations.
    — Brad Lendon, CNN, 2 Sep. 2020
  • The exercises, which come closer to Taiwan than in previous cross-strait crises, have heightened fears of a military clash.
    — Lily Kuo, Washington Post, 5 Aug. 2022
  • Notice, too, how Xi blames Taiwan for cross-strait tensions even as his air force violates Taiwanese airspace with impunity.
    — Matthew Continetti, National Review, 20 Nov. 2021
  • That assessment echoed the appraisals of several current and former co-workers, who said in interviews with The Times that the inspector was quiet, low-key and strait-laced.
    — Alan Feuer, New York Times, 5 Nov. 2020
  • This is Elle and Darcy too, a glittery girl and her perfectly imperfect, strait-laced yet vulnerable match.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 4 Dec. 2020
  • Song recently took over as head of TAO, the Chinese government’s department for handling cross-strait affairs.
    — Bloomberg News, Bloomberg.com, 10 Feb. 2023
  • Subsequent episodes, including one in which the most strait-laced teacher got looped on alcohol and ran wild and naked through the halls like a demented leprechaun, maintained the madcap standard.
    — James Wolcott, HWD, 18 Jan. 2017
  • Sand—a key ingredient in the glass, concrete, mortars, and plasters used in many construction projects—has emerged as a small but contentious flashpoint in cross-strait relations.
    — Nicolas Rivero, Quartz, 4 Aug. 2022
  • India will have to gird for the coming border war with an expansionist China, and Taiwan will prepare for the inevitable cross-strait invasion.
    — Jerry Hendrix, National Review, 18 Oct. 2017
  • While other performers revel in the inherent humor of their roles, Laura Carns is entrusted with the more strait-laced persona of Alice Sycamore.
    — Bob Kostanczuk, Post-Tribune, 6 Sep. 2017
  • Aso, asked about Japan's stance on the cross-strait issue at a news conference on Tuesday, said any contingency over Taiwan should be resolved through dialogue.
    — NBC News, 16 July 2020
  • However, few analysts see an imminent threat of cross-strait conflict within this third term.
    — Rhoda Kwan, NBC News, 16 Oct. 2022
  • In local elections, cross-strait tensions take a backseat to more immediate concerns.
    — Stephanie Yang, Los Angeles Times, 25 Nov. 2022
  • The visit marks a significant turning point in Sino-U.S. relations and the cross-strait strategic environment.
    — Nathaniel Taplin, WSJ, 6 Aug. 2022
  • Cross-strait tensions are at their highest since the 1996 Taiwanese presidential elections, when China conducted a series of missile tests just before the polls.
    — Time Staff, Time, 4 Jan. 2023
  • The runway on Mayun Island allows whoever controls it to project power into the strait and easily launch airstrikes into mainland Yemen, convulsed by a yearslong bloody war.
    — Jon Gambrell, Star Tribune, 26 May 2021

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'strait.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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