Find the word definition

Crossword clues for straitened

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
straitened
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
circumstances
▪ Davison's investments failed, leaving the family in straitened circumstances when he died in 1893.
▪ But the neighborhood had now fallen into straitened circumstances.
▪ His father died in 1886, leaving the young family in straitened circumstances.
▪ There is evidence that sons make considerable efforts to provide support for their parents even when they are in straitened circumstances themselves.
▪ I should have sent the drinks back, but instead looked upon them as a windfall in our rather straitened circumstances.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And are there those, as Rose suggests, who live even more straitened lives?
▪ But it proved an expensive success, and in these straitened times, everybody is playing safe.
▪ But the neighborhood had now fallen into straitened circumstances.
▪ Davison's investments failed, leaving the family in straitened circumstances when he died in 1893.
▪ His father died in 1886, leaving the young family in straitened circumstances.
▪ In straitened times, group directors will face tough decisions about allocating resources between divisions.
▪ There is evidence that sons make considerable efforts to provide support for their parents even when they are in straitened circumstances themselves.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Straitened

Straiten \Strait"en\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Straitened; p. pr. & vb. n. Straitening.]

  1. To make strait; to make narrow; hence, to contract; to confine.

    Waters, when straitened, as at the falls of bridges, give a roaring noise.
    --Bacon.

    In narrow circuit, straitened by a foe.
    --Milton.

  2. To make tense, or tight; to tighten.

    They straiten at each end the cord.
    --Pope.

  3. To restrict; to distress or embarrass in respect of means or conditions of life; -- used chiefly in the past participle; -- as, a man straitened in his circumstances.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
straitened

c.1600, "too narrow;" 1716, "reduced to hardship;" past participle adjective from strait (v.). Phrase straitened circumstances recorded from 1766.

Wiktionary
straitened
  1. squeezed or confined v

  2. (en-past of: straiten)

WordNet
straitened

adj. distressed or embarrassed (especially financially)

Usage examples of "straitened".

On one occasion Salicetti paid him three thousand francs, in assignats, as the price of his carriage, which his straitened circumstances obliged him to dispose of.

I said, in palliation of this dark fact, that I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a great wrong, and that he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he was so straitened in means.

I wish only to suggest, given what I must suffer, that it is undoubtedly more toilsome and more difficult, more subject to hunger and thirst, more destitute, straitened, and impoverished, for there can be no doubt that knights errant in the past endured many misfortunes in the course of their lives.

CHAPTER VIII The exposure of the plot was most prejudicial to the prosperity of the Ursuline community: spurious possession, far from bringing to their convent an increase of subscriptions and enhancing their reputation, as Mignon had promised, had ended for them in open shame, while in private they suffered from straitened circumstances, for the parents of their boarders hastened to withdraw their daughters from the convent, and the nuns in losing their pupils lost their sole source of income.

Continent to live a straitened life in Calais, as the late George Brummell had done when his creditors had closed in on him.

Certainly Madame Madeleine Mathiot de la Bec was a lady whose upper-class lineage could not be doubted, especially when she took him into the dimly lit salon to show him the work on the easel that straitened circumstances were forcing her to sell.

In a few seasons he straitened the coltishness with admonitions, faded the pink and gold with preaching, and produced a sad, grey wraith of wifehood who died, unprotesting, a year after her second son was born.

In the privacy of a four-wheeler, on her way to a charity cottage (one of a row) which by the exiguity of its dimensions and the simplicity of its accommodation, might well have been devised in kindness as a place of training for the still more straitened circumstances of the grave, she was forced to hid from her own child a blush of remorse and shame.

The poor man ran out of his cottage, and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the night and to offer them all the simple hospitality which they were able to give in straitened circumstances.

It is a melancholy reflection, Nell, but I fear I shouldn't be a very good wife for a man in straitened circumstances.

So ended the poor maid's humble little tale--whereby we learn that since a hundred million dollars in New York and twenty-two fish-hooks on the border of the Arctic Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man in straitened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when he can buy ten cents' worth of fish-hooks and emigrate.

Even in straitened circumstances a girl of good class, like Josephine, would certainly have been taught history and geography, given good books to read and listened intelligently to talks on the radio.

Swiveller to say, that, although the expenses of her education kept him in straitened circumstances for half a dozen years, he never slackened in his zeal, and always held himself sufficiently repaid by the accounts he heard (with great gravity) of her advancement, on his monthly visits to the governess, who looked upon him as a literary gentleman of eccentric habits, and of a most prodigious talent in quotation.

He was but fourteen when his father died, leaving the family in straitened circumstances.

Early retirement would severely curtail his pension, leav-ing his widow and the girl in straitened circumstances.