Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Producing or designed to produce strict conformity by ruthless or arbitrary means.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of, pertaining to, or resembling Procrustes, a robber of ancient Greece, who, according to the tradition, tortured his victims by placing them on a certain bed, and stretching them or lopping off their legs to adapt the body to its length; resembling this mode of torture.
  • Hence Reducing by violence to strict conformity to a measure or model; producing uniformity by deforming or injurious force or by mutilation.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of or pertaining to Procrustes, or the mode of torture practiced by him; producing conformity by violent means

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or relating to the mythical giant Procrustes or the mode of torture practiced by him

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Procrustes, a mythical Greek giant who stretched or shortened captives to make them fit his beds, from Latin Procrustēs, from Greek Prokroustēs, from prokrouein, hammer out, to stretch out : pro-, forth; see pro– + krouein, to beat.]

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Examples

  • I used the term "Procrustean" very specifically to characterize the incorporation of soldiers over sixteen into the provisions of the convention.

    Children at War Macpherson, Martin 2000

  • This effect could be called "Procrustean" after the Greek mythical tale of Procrustes, but for the slightly less intellectual like me , could be called the climate science version of Monty Python’s "Summarize Proust competition"

    Science and Nature: Under fire for 'censorship' « Climate Audit 2005

  • One big reason is the government's own Procrustean attempt to keep market-moving information legally bottled up in the name of a "level playing field."

    Temporary Sanity in Insider-Trading Law Jr. Holman W. Jenkins 2011

  • In plain English, if some countries do well (and/or pursue sound policies) while others do poorly (and/or pursue unsound policies), locking them into a single currency will squeeze some countries like an increasingly uncomfortable Procrustean bed.

    The Euro Zone's German Crisis Alan S. Blinder 2011

  • Despite this discouraging beginning, our story will end well: the study of the microbial world at the beginning of the 21st century is liberating biology from the Procrustean bed of dogma on which it has been cast for so long, and a new understanding of evolution as a process is already beginning to form, in a manner that will eventually supersede the scientifically stultifying language-culture of the 20th century.

    2009 September - Telic Thoughts 2009

  • Over time, the media would grow more Procrustean still.

    Deconstructing Obama Jack Cashill 2011

  • Yeah, you can get them to match if you approach the metaphor in a Procrustean way, cutting off most of the details and stretching the remaining ones.

    Armageddon married in the morning « 2009

  • The problem is that the story attempts to fit earnings and share prices into a Procrustean bed of conventional wisdom, Wall Street division.

    Robert Teitelman: Capital Versus Talent in Investment Banking Robert Teitelman 2011

  • Yeah, you can get them to match if you approach the metaphor in a Procrustean way, cutting off most of the details and stretching the remaining ones.

    2009 June « 2009

  • Over time, the media would grow more Procrustean still.

    Deconstructing Obama Jack Cashill 2011

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