Etymologically, ‘strait’ is “strict” and ‘straight’ is “stretched.”
As Trump stretches out his war in Iran, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.
Connecting the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz, through which so much of the world’s oil, fertilizer, and other critical goods are shipped, is only 24–60 miles wide. The portion of the strait that ships can pass through is even narrower.
It is this narrowness, this tightness, not any lane-like straightness of its geography, that gives the strait—and all others—its name.
The homonyms strait and straight have a lot in common. They sound the same. They are nearly spelled the same. They even overlap to some extent in meaning—so much so that straight has overtaken strait in some contexts.
But etymologically, strait is “strict” and straight is “stretched.”
Etymology isn’t going to end any wars. But at least it can resolve some lexical confusions.
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Strait etymology
Means “narrow”; from Latin strictus
- Recorded since early 1200s
- Earliest senses included “narrow; tightly; strict”
- By 1380s, referred to a narrow passage of water that connects two larger bodies of water
- From Old French estreit, from Latin strictus, “close, tight, narrow”
- English strict is directly from Latin strictus
- Strictus is past participle of the Latin stringere, “to draw tight”
- That makes strait and strict doublets (words with the same root but different pathways into a language)
- Derivatives of stringere are many: constrict, district, restriction, strain, stringent, and more
- Very remotely, the English string and Latin stringere may be related
- Straits became a metaphor for a time of need or trouble by the mid-1500s, as if in a tight and narrow place, especially in the phrases dire straits or financial straits
In terms of waterways, the oldest strait so attested in English is—as Chaucer had it around 1386 in his Canterbury-constituting “Man of Law’s Tale” —“the Strayte Of Marrok.” That is, the Strait of Morocco, now known as the Strait of Gibraltar.
Yeres and dayes fleet this creature
Thurghout the See of Grece unto the Strayte
Of Marrok, as it was hire aventure. (463–65)
Or, as Harvard University helpfully updates Chaucer’s Middle English for us:
Years and days floated this creature
Throughout the Sea of Greece unto the Strait
Of Gibraltar, as it was her lot.
The “creature,” which once meant “person,” is Custance, the tale’s central character and paragon of the virtue of constancy.
Which leads us nicely to…
Straight etymology
Means “not curved”; old verb form of English stretch
- Recorded since early 1200s
- Earliest sense was as adjectival use of past participle stretched
- “Not curved or bent” sense is recorded by 1380s
- Was an earlier past participle form of the Old English streccan, “to stretch”
- Another form was straught; compare the irregular forms of teach/taught
- Old English streccan has Germanic roots; stark and string could be related; strait and straight could then be extremely distant cousins
A not-so straight and narrow path?
Strait and straight have long been confused in the English language. One prominent example is straight and narrow, as in the straight and narrow path.
The expression appears to originate in a (completely understandable) misinterpretation of strait from Matthew 7:14 in the King James Bible:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
The preceding verse quite emphasizes width vs. narrowness:
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.
The gate, the opening, is strait. It’s tight, constricted, and therefore difficult to pass through. Like the proverbial eye of the needle.
As the same evangelist ascribes to Jesus in Matthew 19:24:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Strait-laced or straight-laced?
Strait vs. straight confusion persists today.
It’s called a straitjacket, not the increasingly permissible straight-jacket, because of how tightly laced and restrained that garment is—not unlike a bodice, so close-fitting that it gave us the figurative strait-laced. But the origins of strait-laced have faded enough that straight-laced is not just an accepted variant, it’s more common.
Straitened circumstances
Far less common today is a verb derived from strait: straiten. It originally meant “to make narrow” and dates back to the early 1500s. That’s around the same time as its confusable counterpart, straighten. Thanks, English.
Over time, straiten narrowed in meaning “to reduce to poverty or hardship,” especially as appearing in the expressions straitened means or straitened income.
That’s something more and more common now—being straitened—as we are stretched thin at gas pumps and grocery aisles from the widening effects of the constricted Strait of Hormuz.
Aftermash
In Persian, the Strait of Hormuz is تنگهٔ هرمز, or Tange-ye Hormoz.
Tang-ye (تنگهٔ) means “strait.” Like strait, tang (تنگ) means “narrow, tight.” The –ye (ـه) is a particle-like suffix here characterizing something as “thin.”
Latin-based words ranging from continent to intend to tenuous may be anciently related to tang!
The place name Hormuz (هرمز) may come from Ahura Mazda, the name of the supreme creator in the Zoroastrian religion, which originated in ancient Iran.
Ahura Mazda is from Avestan, the sacred Iranian language of Zoroastrianism. Ahura means “lord” and mazda, “wise.”
The Arabic for the Strait of Hormuz is مَضيق هُرمُز, or Maḍīq Hurmuz, with مَضيق (Maḍīq) referring to the geographical strait and from an Arabic root concerning enclosure or narrowness.
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