Dictionary

straitjacket en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˈstɹeɪtˌd͡ʒækɪt/

Etymology

Etymology tree English strait Old French jaque Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Italic *-tosder.? Late Latin -ittus Old French -et Middle French jacquetbor. English jacket English straitjacket From strait (“restrictive”) + jacket.

Meanings

1. 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. 1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 243:
2. (figuratively) Any situation seen as confining or restricting.
   • [I]f we remain in one discipline, we remain in a straitjacket; an adequate theory of language evolution requires a lot of interdisciplinary work. 2009, Michael Giffin, Quadrant, November 2009, No. 461 (Volume LIII, Number 11), Quadrant Magazine Limited, page 99
   • our ever-increasing bureaucratic straitjacket of regulations

Forms

Relateds

strait-laced

Synonyms

straitwaistcoat

Translations (38)

it camicia di forza (a jacket-like garment) · fi pakkopaita (a jacket-like garment) · de Zwangsjacke (a jacket-like garment) · pt colete de forças (a jacket-like garment) · sv tvångströja (a jacket-like garment) · yi משוגעים־העמדל (a jacket-like garment) · el ζουρλομανδύας (a jacket-like garment) · bg усмирителна риза (a jacket-like garment) · cmn 約束衣 /约束衣 (a jacket-like garment) · is spennitreyja (a jacket-like garment) · pt camisa de força (a jacket-like garment) · da spændetrøje (a jacket-like garment) · cmn 緊身衣 /紧身衣 (a jacket-like garment) · fr camisole de force (a jacket-like garment) · ca camisa de força (a jacket-like garment) · es camisa de fuerza (a jacket-like garment) · eo trudkitelo (a jacket-like garment) · pl kaftan bezpieczeństwa (a jacket-like garment) · mk лудачка кошула (a jacket-like garment) · io koakto-kamizolo (a jacket-like garment) · tr deli gömleği (a jacket-like garment) · ja 拘束衣 (a jacket-like garment) · nb tvangstrøye (a jacket-like garment) · ro cămașă de forță (a jacket-like garment) · et hullusärk (a jacket-like garment) · cmn 拘束衣 (a jacket-like garment) · nl dwangbuis (a jacket-like garment) · hu kényszerzubbony (a jacket-like garment) · pdt Spaunjak (a jacket-like garment) · ga seaicéad ceangail (a jacket-like garment) · cy caethwasgod (a jacket-like garment) · cmn 拘束服 (a jacket-like garment) · ko 강압복 (a jacket-like garment) · ru смири́тельная руба́шка (a jacket-like garment) · nn tvangstrøye (a jacket-like garment) · cs svěrací kazajka (a jacket-like garment) · cmn 約束服 /约束服 (a jacket-like garment) · hy զսպաշապիկ (a jacket-like garment)

straitjacket en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˈstɹeɪtˌd͡ʒækɪt/

Etymology

Etymology tree English strait Old French jaque Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Italic *-tosder.? Late Latin -ittus Old French -et Middle French jacquetbor. English jacket English straitjacket From strait (“restrictive”) + jacket.

Meanings

1. (literally, transitive) 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? 1948, Henry Green [pseudonym; Henry Vincent Yorke], [chapter 1], in Concluding: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, published 1950, →OCLC, page 11:
2. (broadly, figuratively, transitive) 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? 1977, Doreen Tovey, chapter 4, in The Coming of Saska (Feline Frolics; 7), Chichester, West Sussex: Summersdale Publishers, published 2007, →ISBN, page 42:
   • she couldnʼt wait to go to college, have a career and leave her parentsʼ straitjacketed lives behind 2019, Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other, Penguin Books (2020), page 280:
   • But it has not always been like this. The last time human remains hit the headlines occurred when the government-sponsored Palmer Report was published. It was deeply antagonistic to research on human remains, and recommended straitjacketing archaeological research within the same framework as medical science. 2004 October 31, Robert Foley, “The Flores remains could have been lost to science”, in The Observer, →ISSN, archived from the original on 25 Jan 2022:
   • Where most primates have a respectable pair of grasping rear hands we have two changelings: long arched pads with rounded chins at one end and stumpy thumbs straight-jacketed to baby fingers at the other. 2012, Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, page 118:
   • 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. 1994, Ian T[revor] King, “Politics, Economics, and Democracy”, in Explorations Beyond the Machine: A Philosophy of Social Science for the Post-Newtonian Age (Mamardashvili Series on Philosophy, Psychology and Sociology), Commack, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, →ISBN, part 4 (The “New” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Politics, and Economics), page 239:
   • A Labour opposition that has straitjacketed its pledges and ambitions with its fears of blowing its strongest chance in years to gain power. 2023 August 7, Nesrine Malik, “British people are kinder and less divided than politicians give us credit for”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 24 Feb 2024:

Forms

Synonyms

jacket

Translations (13)

pl ograniczać (to restrict the freedom of) · fi pukea pakkopaitaan (to put someone into a straitjacket) · pl ograniczyć (to restrict the freedom of) · fr camisole de force (to put someone into a straitjacket) · fi pukea pakkopaitaan (to restrict the freedom of) · sv förkväva (to restrict the freedom of) · pl zakładać kaftan bezpieczeństwa (to put someone into a straitjacket) · pl założyć kaftan bezpieczeństwa (to put someone into a straitjacket) · nl iemand een dwangbuis aandoen (to put someone into a straitjacket) · nl iemand in zijn vrijheid beperken (to restrict the freedom of) · io koakto-kamizolizar (to put someone into a straitjacket) · sv sätta tvångströja på (to put someone into a straitjacket) · ro cămașă de forță (to put someone into a straitjacket)