All 13 Uses of

strait
in
Dracula

I am, I know, either being deceived, like a baby, by my own fears, or else I am in desperate straits, and if the latter be so, I need, and shall need, all my brains to get through.
p. 34.7

straits = a bad or difficult situation

Passed Gibraltar and out through Straits.
p. 93.5 *

straits = narrow water passages

Mate says we must be past Straits of Dover, as in a moment of fog lifting he saw North Foreland, just as he heard the man cry out.
p. 94.5

Jack Sheppard himself couldn't get free from the strait waistcoat that keeps him restrained, and he's chained to the wall in the padded room.†
p. 113.8

strait = narrow water passage

He was still in the strait waistcoat and in the padded room, but the suffused look had gone from his face, and his eyes had something of their old pleading.†
p. 117.8

At first he was silent in his fighting, but as we began to master him, and the attendants were putting a strait waistcoat on him, he began to shout, 'I'll frustrate them!†
p. 167.7

I mistrust these quiet moods of his, so I have given the attendant a hint to look closely after him, and to have a strait waistcoat ready in case of need.†
p. 241.2

Send me away how you will and where you will, send keepers with me with whips and chains, let them take me in a strait waistcoat, manacled and leg-ironed, even to gaol, but let me go out of this.†
p. 262.8

I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait waistcoats.†
p. 292.5

Oh, John, my friend, we are in awful straits.
p. 361.7 *

straits = a bad or difficult situation

Definitions:

(1) (strait as in: Strait of Hormuz)
a narrow channel of the sea joining two larger bodies of water
(2) (strait as in: put her in a tough strait)
a bad or difficult situation
(3) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

Less commonly, strait can mean narrow or cramped -- as used in the compound word straitjacket. Similarly, it can mean rigid as in strait-laced.

These words are sometimes spelled straight*, but strait is a different word than straight -- which has many meanings.