(superl.) Evil in great degree; dreadful; dismal; horrible; terrible; lamentable.
Example Sentences:
(1) Why is it so surprising to people that a boy like Chol, just out of conflict, has thought through the needs of his country in such a detailed way?” While Beah’s zeal is laudable, the situation in South Sudan is dire .
(2) It is that beautiful moment when the original Metamorphosis is destroyed so that it can be refashioned for a global community of readers in dire need of new forms of storytelling.
(3) In this investigation, reanalysis of responses to case vignettes obtained from 436 psychologists, psychiatrists, and internists revealed that on the issue of confidentiality management, these health care providers discriminate among cases involving: Premeditated harm to others, socially irresponsible acts with possible dire consequences to self or others, and minor theft.
(4) The report’s concluding chapters raised dire warning that the operations of contemporary child protection agencies were replicating many of the destructive dynamics of the Stolen Generations era.
(5) Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, warned Barack Obama in public remarks this month that history had shown “sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences”.
(6) Algeria had not scored a World Cup goal since they drew 1-1 with Northern Ireland at Mexico 1986, a run that took in five matches, including that dire 0-0 draw with England in Cape Town four years ago.
(7) Professor Lord Stern of the London School of Economics, the author of the influential Stern Report into the economics of climate change for the Treasury in 2006, warned that if the pattern continued, the results would be dire.
(8) High among the range of issues was the media dominance of the Globo group (whose journalists were chased away from demonstrations by an irate mob), inefficient use of public funds, forced relocations linked to Olympic real estate developments, the treatment of indigenous groups, dire inequality and excessive use of force by police in favela communities.
(9) Burrows had resigned as governor of Bank of Ireland, leaving the lender in dire straits, with big losses and mounting debt threatening its very survival.
(10) Yet the inability to get on in life is a now a major and growing problem for middle-class children and this group is in dire need of attention, it is expected to report.
(11) Vince Cable, their shadow chancellor, said: "The Liberal Democrats welcome the government's recognition that radical action is now needed, reflecting the dire and deteriorating position of the UK economy.
(12) Its willingness to ignore diplomatic convention and use its Kuala Lumpur embassy to conduct an extraterritorial assassination will be seen as setting a dire precedent that cannot be allowed to stand.
(13) What is clear, however, is that the reported escalation in fighting exacerbates the already dire humanitarian and human rights situation and the suffering of the Yemeni people,” said Ban’s spokesman, Farhan Haq.
(14) In a scene of young soldiers at rest for a few minutes at the front, he takes us into their heads: one full of dire forebodings, another singing, one trying to identify a bird on a tree – soldiers dreaming of girls’ breasts, dogs, sausages and poetry.
(15) Despite its own dire predictions on the potential impact of climate change , the government's impact assessment for Flood Re does not take account of " changing flood risk due to deterioration of existing flood defences [or] climate change".
(16) The situation is so dire the National Audit Office has warned that by 2020 schools will be worse funded than at any time since the mid-90s.
(17) John Macgregor, an aid worker who has been accompanying teams delivering food and water to Battambang, described the area as a vast inland sea where conditions are dire and malnutrition is common.
(18) But they are also the stuff of nightmares, because if an electricity grid is overwhelmed by demand, the consequences can be dire, as India discovered recently , when more than 700 million people were left without power.
(19) Thousands of jobs that would have been created will be lost and the knock-on effect will be so dire.
(20) While big businesses have enjoyed access to new couriers, Royal Mail itself eventually reached such a dire state that the Hooper report urged the government to rewrite the law to clarify that competition was a mixed blessing.
Strait
Definition:
(a.) A variant of Straight.
(superl.) Narrow; not broad.
(superl.) Tight; close; closely fitting.
(superl.) Close; intimate; near; familiar.
(superl.) Strict; scrupulous; rigorous.
(superl.) Difficult; distressful; straited.
(superl.) Parsimonious; niggargly; mean.
(adv.) Strictly; rigorously.
(a.) A narrow pass or passage.
(a.) A (comparatively) narrow passageway connecting two large bodies of water; -- often in the plural; as, the strait, or straits, of Gibraltar; the straits of Magellan; the strait, or straits, of Mackinaw.
(a.) A neck of land; an isthmus.
(a.) Fig.: A condition of narrowness or restriction; doubt; distress; difficulty; poverty; perplexity; -- sometimes in the plural; as, reduced to great straits.
(v. t.) To put to difficulties.
Example Sentences:
(1) Coastguard Mohamed al-Alay said the refugees, carrying official UN refugee agency (UNHCR) documents, were travelling from Yemen to Sudan when they were attacked by an Apache helicopter near the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
(2) It’s a model Guyula says could be strengthened and expanded if the Australian government agreed to negotiate a treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
(3) Burrows had resigned as governor of Bank of Ireland, leaving the lender in dire straits, with big losses and mounting debt threatening its very survival.
(4) When dealing with Tsai, we should bear in mind important factors such as her experience, personality and mindset,” added Wang, from the association for relations across the Taiwan strait.
(5) In the wake of direct shipping and postal links, this summer also saw the first direct flights across the Taiwan Straits since the civil war, with passenger services now running daily.
(6) If one of the focuses of this government is getting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people employed and staying within the workforce then one would have thought we’d have seen a larger outcome of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations funded under this strategy.
(7) The speedboat drivers pay close attention to the water conditions on the strait and try to approach the Iranian coast just after sunset.
(8) An epidemiological study of the prevalence of refractive errors was made of the Eskimo population of the Norton Sound and Bering Straits region of Alaska.
(9) Abbott will never be the prime minister for Aboriginal affairs because his “lifestyle” claim exposed such a fundamental lack of understanding about the imperative of “country” to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including those in the cities, that I’m sure few will ever be able to trust him again.
(10) Mortality at study sites in the Strait of Juan de Fuca was related to premature parturition; 19 of 49 (39%) of the pups found dead were born prematurely.
(11) She read aloud the act preamble , acknowledging the Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders as the inhabitants of Australia before European settlement and the dispossession, without compensation, of their lands.
(12) It is devastating that jail is seen as a rite of passage for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, part of the natural order of things.” Indigenous prisoner who killed himself wasn't in a 'safe' cell despite being at risk Read more He said a Labor government would fund three trials – in a city, a regional town and a remote community – of “justice reinvestment” programs, “redirecting funds spent on justice system to prevention and diversionary programs to address underlying causes of offending with disproportionately high levels of incarceration”.
(13) Still, Murrumu’s qualified support for constitutional recognition will be controversial among the many Indigenous Australians who believe “recognise” offers Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people nothing and that treaties are a minimum starting point.
(14) Except sex.” Rechtshaid and Flowers bonded on the phone over Dire Straits and Depeche Mode, relinquishing control to each other in Flowers’ Battle Born studios and crafting an accessible yet sophisticated power rock record.
(15) Earlier in the expedition, the crew believe, they became the first boat to travel through the Nares Strait west of Greenland to the Arctic Ocean in June, once impassable because of sea ice at that time of year.
(16) When the White House sent a private message to Tehran last week about its so-called "red lines" in the Strait of Hormuz, the reaction was both puzzled and incredulous.
(17) The loss of Aboriginal land, cultures and livelihoods is at the core of the climate crisis, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people forced off our land due to extractive industries that fuel climate change, and increasingly by the devastating impacts of sea level rise, drought and reduced access to clean water,” she said.
(18) With one exception, animals from Georgia Strait and those away from the immediate influence of Fraser River water contained no detectable levels of chlorinated hydrocarbons.
(19) But they did Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a grievous, hurtful, harmful wrong on many levels and this includes failing to include a single positive word about us anywhere in the constitution of modern Australia.
(20) The straited accumulations in adrenal cortical cells and brain macrophages that are characteristic of adrenoleukodystrophy have been studied histochemically in cryostat sections to seek leads for the biochemical identification of the striated material.