STRAITS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does straits mean? 

• STRAITS (noun)
  The noun STRAITS has 2 senses:

1. a bad or difficult situation or state of affairs

2. a difficult juncture

  Familiarity information: STRAITS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STRAITS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A bad or difficult situation or state of affairs

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

pass; strait; straits

Hypernyms ("straits" is a kind of...):

situation (a complex or critical or unusual difficulty)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "straits"):

desperate straits; dire straits (a state of extreme distress)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A difficult juncture

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural events

Synonyms:

head; pass; straits

Context example:

matters came to a head yesterday

Hypernyms ("straits" is a kind of...):

juncture; occasion (an event that occurs at a critical time)

 Context examples 

Thirty years have I been on the sea, and never yet in greater straits.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Remember that we are in terrible straits.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

There were three branches of the contest, and he entered them all, laughing at himself bitterly the while in that he was driven to such straits to live.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Soon we passed out of the straits and doubled the south-east corner of the island, round which, four days ago, we had towed the HISPANIOLA.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The treasurer was of the same opinion: he showed to what straits his majesty’s revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which would soon grow insupportable; that the secretary’s expedient of putting out your eyes, was so far from being a remedy against this evil, that it would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of blinding some kind of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew sooner fat; that his sacred majesty and the council, who are your judges, were, in their own consciences, fully convinced of your guilt, which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death, without the formal proofs required by the strict letter of the law.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Oh, John, my friend, we are in awful straits.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

In the second place, the ebb was now making—a strong rippling current running westward through the basin, and then south'ard and seaward down the straits by which we had entered in the morning.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I am, I know, either being deceived, like a baby, by my own fears, or else I am in desperate straits; and if the latter be so, I need, and shall need, all my brains to get through.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

At the end of the straits, I made sure we must fall into some bar of raging breakers, where all my troubles would be ended speedily; and though I could, perhaps, bear to die, I could not bear to look upon my fate as it approached.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)