Sharing about English Lesson

It often surprises people that straight-laced is wrong � the correct spelling is strait-laced (US spelling straitlaced). 

The word strait is a noun meaning �a narrow passage of water that connects two seas or large areas of water� (Oxford), e.g. the Straits of Gibraltar, Straits of Malacca, Johor Straits.  There are also figurative expressions, of course, such as dire straits and desperate financial straits.

No doubt the writer was exercising literary licence in her descriptions of Tiger Woods in the above excerpt (Straits Times,12 December 2009), in which she uses the superlative forms cleanest, straightest and goodiest, but straightest shows quite clearly that she has confused the noun strait (which cannot take the suffix �est) with the adjective straight (which can).