straitjacket

noun

No English definition recorded for this entry.

Pronunciation: /ˈstɹeɪtˌd͡ʒækɪt/

Etymology: Etymology tree English strait English jacket English straitjacket From strait (“restrictive”) + jacket.

A jacketlike garment with very long sleeves which can be secured in place, thus preventing the wearer from moving their arms; often used in psychiatric hospitals to prevent patients from injuring themselves or others.
“There’s a couple of people actually wearing duct-tape straitjackets.”
Any situation seen as confining or restricting.
“our ever-increasing bureaucratic straitjacket of regulations”
“[I]f we remain in one discipline, we remain in a straitjacket; an adequate theory of language evolution requires a lot of interdisciplinary work.”

Etymology: Etymology tree English strait English jacket English straitjacket From strait (“restrictive”) + jacket.

To put someone into a straitjacket.
“What he asked himself now was,—could Miss Edge and Miss Baker, in order to get him out of the house, have set Birt onto Elizabeth, be in league with the man to break a poor old fellow down by simply driving his sad girl out of her wits? To have her straitjacketted even, muffled in a padded room?”
To restrict the freedom of someone or something, either physically or psychologically.
“Charles for five whole days in a Victorian topper and tailcoat when he practically had to be straitjacketted to get him into tails for a three-hour wedding?”
“Encouraging, allowing for, and maintaining a plurality of viewpoints concerning public policy, for instance, adaptively (even though partially and incompletely) reduces the chances of a rigidly deterministic and reductionistic mindset maladaptively straitjacketting our abilities to deal with dynamic complexity and to appreciate the benefits of malleability and self-criticality in remaining open to the challenges of our environment.”