taut

While most agree that Intermezzo is a step up from her other novels, Lola Seaton in the New Statesman said it "lacks the taut self-assurance of Conversations with Friends and Normal People".

Football and politics pull and stretch the imaginary tendons of masculinity till they’re taut.

Going over to inspect, one discovers that the work’s flat front scrim is actually a shallow box, with black scrim pulled taut at each side.

In Jeremy Saulnier’s “Rebel Ridge,” a “Rambo”-inspired riff on racial profiling and the insidious banality of evil baked into American policing, the filmmaker demonstrates his mastery of the taut action thriller.

I wouldn’t say I look like those lithe young women who surround me there — most are so young that I could be their mother — but a taut core has developed beneath my midriff bulge.