strait-laced
/streɪtˈleɪst
/(also straight-laced) Usage
adjective
Having or showing very strict moral attitudes: his strait-laced parents were horrified...
- A strait-laced British Government official arrives to offer cash aid to dig 38 wells for the president's drought-stricken people.
- For two decades, the BBC's voice of youth enforced a moral code that your average Victorian aunt would have thought strait-laced.
- In the sequel, a clash of cultures ensues when the straight-laced, conservative Byrnes family meets the liberal, relaxed Fockers.
Synonyms
prim and proper, prim, proper, prudish, priggish, puritanical, moralistic, prissy, mimsy, niminy-piminy, shockable, Victorian, old-maidish, schoolmistressy, schoolmarmish, governessy;
conventional, conservative, old-fashioned, stuffy, staid, of the old school, narrow-minded
informal goody-goody, starchy, square, fuddy-duddy, stick-in-the-mud
rare Grundyish, Pecksniffian
Usage
As an adjective strait means ‘narrow or cramped’ and ‘strict or rigorous’: the idea behind strait-laced and straitjacket is of being tightly laced or confined. As strait is now old-fashioned and unfamiliar, however, people often interpret it as the more usual word straight. Straight-laced and straightjacket are now generally accepted in standard English, and the spelling straight-laced is more common than strait-laced in the Oxford English Corpus.