- By Jim Evans
- Entertainment
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Smart Talk SMART TALK By Saber S. Poder, R.N.
STRAIGHT JACKET: The staff of the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired sometimes discusses, over a sarsaparilla in the Fowler Lounge, what a straight jacket might be. “Windy” Prolix says it’s any men’s jacket unadorned by feathers or sequins, and any women’s jacket with buttons on the left.
The rumors are true; the Institute does own strait jackets, but we use them only on those patients who hold up two pairs of fingers to indicate quotation marks while they talk. Strait jackets help them relearn to say “so-called” and “so to speak.”
Strait means narrow and restricted, as in straitlaced. It comes to us from the Latin strictus, and more directly from the Italian stretto. As a noun, strait survives in dire straits and on maps at places like the Strait of Gibraltar.
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