to straddle
- verb
- /ˈstrædəl/
- To avoid conflict, he often straddles the fence on controversial issues.
- straddle the line
- straddle the fence
- straddle two cultures
So if you're able to straddle both, it's where you grow.
- So if you're able to straddle both, it's where you grow.
- So nature knows that we continuously straddle these two polarities.
- Like I've always straddled those those two sides.
- So it's it's good to kind of try to to straddle and and look back and forth.
- And Aquinas, as many historians have pointed out, is kind of straddling a middle path.
- They could be in the middle straddling this.
- So it was a very strange pendulum swing, but they kind of straddled both worlds.
- So we're sort of straddling both, both ends of the, of the continuum.
- You're in the world and you're doing things and, you know, creating experiences for people and, you know, in some ways very much straddled between these two worlds.
- Or are you still somebody who's trying to straddle these worlds equally on unsure footing about where you actually want to want to stand?
- And so being able to straddle those two levels of analysis is really the essence of being in a virtuoso, right?
- So in your again, you'll have managed to, I guess, straddle groups of people who are rich, people who are famous and people who are rich and famous.
Examples
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I straddle the proverbial line that separates the two.
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For years, low-income women have straddled the two worlds of welfare benefits and healthcare employment.
Academic text (2001) -
And it's just an amazing line that you manage to straddle every day.
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I mean, at its best, it's really fun to try and straddle between those two worlds.
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Nor would they be able to straddle the political fence.
Academic text (2004) -
So if you're able to straddle both, it's where you grow.
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"You can't straddle two camps, and it's not possible for you to choose one.
Fiction book (1998) -
And I, I think I'm fortunate in the sense that I kind of get to straddle different realities.
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The experience of Masamba Buso, whom I interviewed in Mbakke in 2002, straddled the line between "traditional" and "modern" Islamic education.
Academic text (2004) -
Evangelicals, the third of the leading strands in American Protestantism, straddle the divide between fundamentalists and liberals.
Academic text (2006)
Synonyms
To avoid giving a direct answer or clear commitment
Stay neutral and not choose a side in a disagreement
To support two opposite sides at the same time to please both
Antonyms
How Committed
Surface Forms
Etymology
Think of straddle as sitting on a fence with a leg on each side so you are 'watching both sides' and not choosing. So to straddle an issue means to avoid taking one side.