taut

Unlike a McNugget or a chicken fry, both of which are primarily taut pieces of dry stuff that exist as vehicles for sauce, the Cane’s version is obviously and unmistakably chicken.

From Slate ● Aug. 24, 2026

Grasping a pair of dark grey trousers, it raised its upper body to stretch the fabric taut, before laying it flat and arranging it into neat halves.

From Barron's ● Jun. 11, 2026

What’s most instructive about Bedlam’s “Othello” is how it reveals the taut mastery of Shakespeare’s writing.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026

Sometimes I imagine the table, the net taut as a border fence.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 2026

Now tilt your head back until your neck is taut, and fix your gaze on a point two miles away.

From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson

With judicious trimming, particularly of the occasional puddle of expository or repetitive dialogue, the play would gain a tauter pace.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2025

The device, called CoolSculpting, was entering an already-crowded beauty industry selling flatter stomachs and tauter jawlines, but it had an advantage: a vaunted scientific pedigree.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 17, 2023

His music looked back to the not-so-distant days of psychedelia and the Velvet Underground, but it was leaner, tauter, steelier.

From New York Times ● Jan. 29, 2023

All told, "Moon Knight" is an odd show in that it gives us characters and actors we'd love to spend more time with, albeit in tauter scenarios than the one presented here.

From Salon ● Mar. 30, 2022

And once more there was silence; and the expectancy, momentarily relaxed, was stretched again, tauter, tauter, almost to the tearing point.

From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

The strongest, tautest story in the collection is “The Haunting of Hajji Hotak,” again told in second person, this time from the perspective of a government surveillant.

From New York Times ● Jul. 19, 2022

One of the tautest exchanges took place when Ose challenged Faulconer’s record on dealing with homelessness, a cornerstone of the former mayor’s campaign.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 4, 2021

Affleck bested Denzel Washington, who starred and directed in “Fences;” the look on his face when Affleck’s name was read speaks as forcefully as any of August Williams’ tautest phrases.

From Salon ● Feb. 27, 2017

I’m not suggesting you gather the family on Christmas week for this one, but this tautest of thrillers from the Coen Brothers won Best Picture for a reason.

From New York Times ● Dec. 1, 2016

She was indeed a proud ship, with the tautest masts and the squarest yards of any ship in the British navy.

From The Loss of the Royal George by Horace Petherick