straighten

Verb

straighten (third-person singular simple present straightens, present participle straightening, simple past and past participle straightened)

1. (transitive) To cause to become straight.
   • [S]o / Do these upbear the little world below / Of Education,—Patience, Love, and Hope. / Methinks, I see them group'd in seemly show, / The straiten'd arms upraised, the palms aslope, / And robes that touching as adown they flow, / Distinctly blend, like snow emboss'd in snow.1830, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “[Sibylline Leaves.] Love, Hope, and Patience in Education.”, in The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge […], volume II, London: Macmillan and Co....
2. (intransitive) To become straight.
3. (transitive) To put in order; to sort; to tidy up.
   • to straighten one's affairs
   • straighten one's account
4. (transitive) To clarify a situation or concept to (an audience).
5. (slang, transitive) To bribe or corrupt.
6. (intransitive) To stand up, especially from a sitting position.
7. (informal, transitive) To make heterosexual.
   • It has been said that to survive in this Wasp society, Blacks must straighten their hair, Jews must straighten their noses, and Gays must straighten themselves. But we will no longer tolerate being straightened. It is the doctors and the straight society who must change.1973 December 22, Satya, “It Is Not We Who Must Change”, in Gay Community News, volume 1, number 27, page 3
   • It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the "straightening" procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the...2006 December 31, Isabel Oakeshott, Chris Gourlay, “Science Told: Hands Off Gay Sheep”, in The Sunday Times