Straight or strait?
straight is an adjective meaning “Not crooked, curly, or bent; having a constant direction throughout its length”; strait is a noun meaning “A narrow channel of water connecting two larger bodies of water”. Use straight as an adjective and strait as a noun (straight is also a noun: “Something that is not crooked or bent such as a part of a…”). They sound the same (/stɹeɪt/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) straight is about 28 times as common as strait.
What is the difference between straight and strait?
| straight | strait | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, adverb, noun, verb | adjective, noun, verb, adverb |
| Meaning | Not crooked, curly, or bent; having a constant direction throughout its length Direct, undeviating Of a direction relative to the subject, precisely; as if following a direct line | A narrow channel of water connecting two larger bodies of water A narrow pass, passage or street |
| Example | Mr. Coniff: He did not have his hat on straight; that is the one thing, is it? | to follow the strait and narrow |
| Forms | straighter, straightest | straits |
| Pronunciation | /stɹeɪt/ /stɹaɪt/ | /stɹeɪt/ |
| In writing | 110 times per million words | 4.0 times per million words |
Sources: straight and strait in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of straight and strait
straight
- 1
Not crooked, curly, or bent; having a constant direction throughout its length
- 2
Of a direction relative to the subject, precisely; as if following a direct line
The door will be straight ahead of you
- 3
Something that is not crooked or bent such as a part of a road or track
- 4
To straighten
- 5
Direct, undeviating
- 6
Directly; without pause, delay or detour
On arriving at work, he went straight to his office
- 7
Five cards in sequence
- 8
Perfectly horizontal or vertical; not diagonal or oblique
Mr. Coniff: He did not have his hat on straight; that is the one thing, is it?
strait
- 1
A narrow channel of water connecting two larger bodies of water
the Strait of Gibraltar
- 2
A narrow pass, passage or street
- 3
A neck of land; an isthmus
- 4
A difficult position
to be in dire straits
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, straight or strait?
straight appears 110 times per million words; strait 4.0 times per million words.
straight 110 times per million wordsstrait 4.0 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search straight vs strait?
“straight vs strait” is searched about 1,300 times a month on Google and 40 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“strait vs straight”, “straight or strait”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.