Having previously flown frequently into a mountainous airport served only by a circling VOR approach (lined up well within 30 degrees of the runway but too steep of a descent to land strait-in maintaining all the stepdown altitudes), ATC occasionally would use "cleared for the strait-in VOR-A approach".
When approaching the airport from the east (opposite side from the final approach course, which came from the west), a clearance direct to the VOR followed by a procedure turn was the norm. On the occasions where you were actually vectored to downwind for a final from that direction (rare and usually a new controller or weather), they would sometimes use the "cleared for strait-in" phraseology. This was explained to be purely a clarification to ensure a pilot did not get to the final approach radial, turn the wrong way out of habit and fly an unexpected procedure turn. Apparently happened a few times.
The "strait-in" approach was (obviously) often followed by a circle-to-land. On a normal, good day, if you picked up the airport early enough to start a normal visual descent you could easily land strait-in, too, which was pretty typical as the approach course was fairly well lined-up with the normally-used runway (as mentioned earlier).
So you could either do a "straight-in" approach to a circle-to-land.
And you could also fly a "circling-only" approach procedure (hence VOR-A) to a straight-in landing. Both legal and safe.