Item Detail
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Welch, John W.
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Book, Section
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260
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260-62
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linguistics; straight/strait
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In contemporary English straight usually means “not crooked,” while the word strait means “narrow.” In the 1829 manuscripts of the Book of Mormon the spelling straight was never used; Oliver Cowdery always spelled these homonyms as strait. The 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language shows both spellings as interchangeable. The words straight and strait are both used in the King James Version of the Old Testament. Understanding their range of meaning in Hebrew may shed light on ideas intended by Isaiah, Lehi, and Nephi.