straight
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /stɹeɪt/
ipa: /stɹaɪt/
rhymes: -eɪt
homophone: strait
Forms: form: straights
form: streight
Etymology: From Middle English streight, streght, streiȝt, the past participle of strecchen (“to stretch”), from Old English streċċan (past participle ġestreaht, ġestreht), from Proto-West Germanic *strakkjan (“to stretch”). Doublet of straught. Equivalent to stretch + -ed.
Senses: examples: text: After four grueling laps, the race had come down to a sprint. Into the straight, although my legs were burning, I called on them for more, and they responded. On my inside the maroon singlet came with me, until it was just the two of us heading for the line.
ref: 2009, Robert Newton, Runner, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 191:
text: Seppi started the engine, then shifted first gear and sped away into second, then third and fourth gear. Frank heard the roar of the Porsche's engine further down the straight and the back short straight. He held a stopwatch in his hand, waiting for him to come up into the straight from the hairpin curve.
ref: 2011, Gene W. Zepp, 24 Heures Du Mans, [S.l.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 19:
glosses: Something that is not crooked or bent such as a part of a road or track.
topics: card-games
poker
glosses: Five cards in sequence.
examples: text: My friends call straights "heteros".
synonyms: hetero
breeder
glosses: A heterosexual.
examples: text: You live with straights who tell you you was king / Jump when your momma tell you anything
ref: 1971, John Lennon, “How Do You Sleep?”, in Imagine:
text: Boys! Boys! You're scaring the straights, okay? Is there any way that we could do this tomorrow?
ref: 1989, Ghostbusters II, spoken by Peter Venkman (Bill Murray):
text: More importantly, Blows Against the Empire […] more than any other work revealed the split vision towards space exploration among many in the counter-culture: a romantic vision of the freedom offered by space that had been fostered by a lifetime of science fiction consumption, immersion in a technological society, the countercultural yearning for speed and “the road,” and, thanks to LSD and other hallucinogens, a unique preappreciation of space traveling not available to straights, versus the bland, oppressive vision of exploration offered by NASA, itself just one part of a larger destructive system that was devastating Earth and that could only offer further oppression in space, not liberation.
ref: 2014, Matthew D. Tribbe, “Turning a Miracle into a Bummer”, in No Requiem for the Space Age, →ISBN, page 150:
synonyms: word: basic bitch
word: bourgeois
word: L7
word: mainstreamer
word: mainstreamist
word: muggle
word: mundane
word: normal
word: normalfag
word: normaloid
word: normie
word: square
word: straight
glosses: A normal person; someone in mainstream society.
examples: text: A straight = a straighter = a straight cut, une cigarette en tabac de Virginie.]
ref: [1923, J[oseph] Manchon, Le slang : lexique de l'anglais familier et vulgaire : précédé d'une étude sur la pronunciation et la grammaire populaires, p. 296
synonyms: straighter
glosses: A cigarette, particularly one containing tobacco instead of marijuana.
antonyms: mixer
glosses: A chiropractor who relies solely on spinal adjustment, with no other treatments.
examples: 2021, B. J. Deming, 25 More Facts About House Cats
A hopeful sign of compromise is the growing popularity of Scottish Fold "straights" (cats like Maru, without droopy ears).
glosses: A cat that has straight ears despite belonging to a breed that often has folded ears.
Derived terms: back straight
gut-shot straight
home straight
inside straight
nut straight
pit straight
the length of the Flemington straight