… the garment with sleeves that tie in the back to restrain the wearer is a “strait” (i.e., narrow, confining) jacket, not a “straight jacket,” which I think is what came with a leisure suit.
By the same token, there is no “straight and narrow path” of righteousness. Matthew 7:13-14 reads (in the King James Version)
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:Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,
which leadeth unto life,
and few there be that find it.
A strait is literally a narrow body of water, as in “Strait of Gibraltar.” Passage through a strait can be dangerous for a ship, leading to such expressions as “desperate straits.” (I suppose that a “desperate straight” is either a very horny heterosexual or the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and Ten of mixed suits facing an opponent holding five diamonds.)
This has been another obsolete and irrelevant message from the language police. You may now resume your normal (and presumably more productive) activities.
H/t: Kevin Drum, who has some substantive comments on the rather … unusual … behavior of the editor of the Washington Times. Bet you didn’t know it was possible to go downhill from Wes Pruden.
Footnote I remain a little bit puzzled by the fact that, long after making fun of the mentally ill ceased to be respectable, it’s still acceptable political invective to liken one’s opponents to the insane. And no, I don’t regard efforts to purge the language of expressions that inflict needless pain on innocent bystanders as instances of an undesirable “political correctness.”