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By Saber S. Poder

 

STRAIGHT-LACED:  Mrs. Shirley Markem Lowe, of the D.B. Wesson High School English Department here in Underbelly, Texas, tells me I shouldn't use the error as my title.  "That's what they'll remember, young lady."  As with straitjacket, many dictionaries allow misspellings of strait-laced.  But strait means narrow and restricted, or such a water passage, as in the Straits of Magellan. Straitened circumstances is a circumlocution for having severely restricted finances.  So strait-laced is not only correct, it makes more sense: strict; morally hidebound.

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