taut

The hawser was as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All around the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream.

I watched him from the side as he strode along. His walk was quite different; his face too looked tauter.

If he curbs his swing a little and gets something crisper and tauter in his methods he may yet be very good.

His outward appearance was calm, but inside he was very taut.

[O]ur friend was a hearty toper in the days of his Whiggery, but no sooner turned one of the tautest of Tories, than he took to the tea-pot. It seems a thing against nature.

Yet the 2016 Éxilé rosé from Lise et Bertrand Jousset in the Loire Valley, made mostly of gamay, was yeasty let light and lithe, while the 2016 Indigeno from Ancarani in Emilia-Romagna, made of trebbiano, was taut and earthy.