Yes, that man is straight as an arrow.
Well, in my experience based on the fact many years ago I used to play Cowboys and Indians, and I was always an Indian, I used to make a bow, and arrows, from the limbs of a tree in our back yard, those arrows were never straight.
How they got them so back in the middle ages without a lathe is anybody’s guess.
We all know what straight means, level, even, true, not deviating. It could be a board, a road, the edge of a piece of paper.
But, of course, there are other meanings like,
He was straight, meaning heterosexual, a question not 50 odd years ago anyone would ask you, and 100 years ago, you wouldn’t dare admit anything but.
In poker, a card game, it is a sequence of five cards, and the sort of straight I’d like to get is ace high. Chances of that happening, zero per cent.
It can mean being honest, that is, you should be straight with her, though I’m not sure telling your wide you’re having an affair would be conducive to continuing good health.
It could mean immediately, as in, I’ve got a headache and going straight to bed, probably after hearing news of that affair that was best left unspoken.
Perhaps that would be the time to have a whiskey straight, that is without mixers or ice. I’ve tried, but still, at the very least I need ice.
This is not to be confused with the word strait, which is a narrow waterway between to areas of land.
But, here’s where it gets murky because a company can be in dire straits after being in desperate straits, and a person can be strait-laced, and just to be certain, most lunatics finish up in a straitjacket.