a. [f. STRAIT adv. + LACED ppl. a.]
† 1. Wearing stays or bodice tightly laced. Obs.
1626. Moryson, Shaks. Europe (1903), 485. The [Irish] wemen generally are not straight laced, perhapps for feare to hurt the sweetenes of breath, and the greatest part are not laced at all.
1650. Bulwer, Anthropomet., Pref. No Maid here’s handsome thought, unless she can With her short Palms her streight-lac’t body span.
1693. Locke, Educ., § 11. We should as certainly have no perfect children born, as we have few well-shaped that are strait-laced.
1698. Fryer, Acc. E. India & P., 394. A Plump Lass being in more esteem than our Slender and Strait-laced Maidens.
transf. 1648. J. Beaumont, Psyche, IX. lii. The strait-lac’d Insect’s slender Brood could ne’r Shrink up themselves into a scanter dress.
b. Of a bodice, etc.: Tightly laced. rare.
Cf. quot. c. 1430, where strait laced is not a compound, but two words.
[c. 1430. Lydg., Min. Poems (Percy Soc.), 201. Hire crowpe doth the semys shrede, Whan they so streyght lasyd been.]
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xviii. IV. 148. It was never, he [Child] declared with much spirit, found politic to put trade into straitlaced bodices.
2. fig. † a. Of things: Narrow in range or scope.
1549. Coverdale, etc., Erasm. Par. 1 Tim. ii. 1–7. Lest Christian loue shoulde appeare to be but a straite laced loue.
1579. G. Harvey, Two Other Lett. (1580), 64. He might haue spared … that same restrictiue, & streightlaced terme, Precisely.
1583. Golding, Calvin on Deut., vi. 4–9. 272. But this exposition is too straite laced, and attaineth not to the verie meaning of Moses.
1686. Goad, Celest. Bodies, I. xi. 41. Natural Causes are not so straight-lac’d.
† b. Of persons: Shut up within oneself, uncommunicative, morose, unsympathetic. Obs.
1546. J. Heywood, Prov., I. xi. (1867), 31. He is so hy in thinstep, and so streight laste, That pryde and couetyse withdrawth all repaste.
1549. Coverdale, etc., Erasm. Par. Ephes., Prol. ¶ iiij. Whan were maisters more vnlouyng or strayterlaced to their seruauntes?
1571. Golding, Calvin on Ps. xxvii. 10. 102. All mortal men who are of nature nigardly & streightlaced [L. qui natura maligni sunt ac restricti].
1579. Lyly, Euphues (Arb.), 54. Commonly if they be adorned with beautie, they be straight laced, and made so high in the insteppe, that they disdaine them most that most desire them.
1691. Norris, Pract. Disc., 297. Is it then possible for a Man seriously … to contemplate the … Goodness of God, and … to be selfish and strait-laced, niggardly and covetous?
† c. Obstinate, indisposed to yield; grudging in gifts or concessions. Obs.
1560. Daus, trans. Sleidane’s Comm., XII. 162 b. He requested them, that they woulde not be ouer streight lased, but to graunt to so muche as they myght with a saufe conscience.
1579–80. North, Plutarch, Galba (1595), 1113. Titus Iunius … onely made the Emperour straight laced to all others, whilest he himselfe tooke vnreasonably of all men.
1588. J. Udall, Diotrephes (Arb.), 23. If it be not vnreasonable, you may assure your selfe of it, for you know, that I haue neuer bin strait laced againste you, or anye of your friends.
1600. Holland, Livy, XXII. lix. 468. Our fathers also, notwithstanding they were most streightlaced, and hardly brought to capitulat and compound for peace, yet sent Embassadours … to redeeme their Captives.
1601. F. Godwin, Bps. of Eng., 523. The Pope was somewhat strait laced in admitting him.
d. Of persons, their habits, opinions, etc.: Excessively rigid or scrupulous in matters of conduct; narrow or over-precise in one’s rules of practice or moral judgment; prudish.
1554. T. Martin, Marr. Priestes, vi. K iiij. He had to doe with certaine holy and straite lased heretikes, whiche denied it to be lawful for a Christian man after his baptisme to retourne to his wife.
1598. Dallington, Meth. Trav., V 2. They of the Reformed Religion may not Dance, being an exercise against which their strait-laced Ministers much inueigh.
1639. Saltmarshe, Pract. Policie, 175. Doe not alwaies stand upon the nice puntilioes … of state and place…; these that doe not observe this, are a little too strait laced for businesse either civill or religious.
1659. in Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc. (N.S.), XVII. 114. If hee or any man else in this place were soe straite laced that they could nott endure such thinges [as a market on Sunday], they might depart the.
1688. Shadwell, Sqr. Alsatia, III. iv. I am not streight-lac’d; but when I was young, I ne’er knew any thing gotten by wenching, but duels, claps, and bastards.
1705. Hickeringill, Priest-Cr., II. ii. 16. This strait-lac’t Doctrine seems contrary to the Justice, Mercy and Holiness of God.
1707. Filmer, Def. Plays, A 6 b. Had these strait-lac’d Gentlemen once gain’d their Point against Plays.
1857. Gladstone, Glean., VI. lii. 81. Gibbon, no straightlaced judge,… records his judgment [etc.].
1870. R. B. Brough, Marston Lynch, xxix. 311. They have such ridiculously strait-laced notions.
1884. Sala, Journ. due South, I. i. (1887), 22. At no time during the period … have the print-sellers of the gay capital been very straight-laced.
1904. L. Stephen, Eng. Lit. & Soc. 18th C., iv. 162. Richardson seemed to be a narrow, straitlaced preacher.
† e. Hampered by narrow rules of procedure.
1766. [? G. Grenville], Sp. agst. Susp. Prerogative (ed. 3), 14. But if that strange thing should fall out, our constitution is not so strait laced as to let a nation die or be stifled, rather than it should be helped by any but the proper officers.
1791. T. Jefferson, Writ. (1830), IV. 527. Will Congress be too strait-laced to carry the constitution into honest effect…?
Hence Straitlacedness.
1832. Leeds Intelligencer, 22 March, 2/5. The man who learns to shirk the obligations of a solemn oath need not set up for any great degree of straitlacedness on minor matters.
1876. M. & Fr. Collins, Vill. Comedy, II. xii. 150. This division of the people led in time to a general appearance of priggishness and straitlacedness in the village.
1903. ‘Angus McNeill’ (T. W. H. Crosland), Egregious English, iv. 38. Their assumption of morality and puritanical straitlacedness is admirable.
