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A stroke; a touch. By this single trait Homer makes an essential difference between the Iliad and Odyssey. Broome.

The keeper of an eating house, or restaurant; a restaurateur. Simmonds.

t his country; or one who aids an enemy in conquering his country. See Treason. O passing traitor, perjured and unjust! Shak.

A traitress. [Obs.] Rom. of R.

Like a traitor; treacherous; traitorous. [Obs.] "Traitorly rascals." Shak.

Guilty of treason; treacherous; perfidious; faithless; as, a traitorous officer or subject. Shak.

Treachery. [Obs.] Chaucer.

A woman who betrays her country or any trust; a traitoress. Dryden.

A chief or transcendent traitor. I. Watts.

Absent-minded; lost in thought; abstracted.

Too straitly or strictly. [Obs.] Sir W. Raleigh.

, or engraved; commonly, a representation of the human face painted from real life. In portraits, the grace, and, we may add, the likeness, consists more in the general air than in the exact similitude of every feature. Sir J. Reynolds.

A portrait painter. [R.] Hamerton.

A portrait; a likeness; a painted resemblance; hence, that which is copied from some example or model. For, by the image of my cause, I see The portraiture of his. Shak. Divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbors but the portraiture. Bacon.

A portrait; a likeness. [Obs.] Whose fair retrait I in my shield do bear. Spenser.

Narrow; not broad. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. Matt. vii. 14. Too strait and low our cottage doors. Emerson.

Parsimonious; sparing; niggardly. [R.] -- Strait"-hand`ed*ness, n. [R.]

A dress of strong materials for restraining maniacs or those who are violently delirious. It has long sleeves, which are closed at the ends, confining the hands, and may be tied behind the back.

ture have scope to fashion the body as she thinks best; we have few well-shaped that are strait-laced. Locke.

Same as Strait-jacket.