Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Producing or designed to produce strict conformity by ruthless or arbitrary means.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- 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.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of or pertaining to Procrustes, or the mode of torture practiced by him; producing conformity by violent means
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or relating to the mythical giant Procrustes or the mode of torture practiced by him
Etymologies
- 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-2 + krouein, to beat. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I used the term "Procrustean" very specifically to characterize the incorporation of soldiers over sixteen into the provisions of the convention.”
“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
“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.”
“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 problem is that the story attempts to fit earnings and share prices into a Procrustean bed of conventional wisdom, Wall Street division.”
The Huffington Post: Robert Teitelman: Capital Versus Talent in Investment Banking
“Over time, the media would grow more Procrustean still.”
“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.”
The Wall Street Journal: Temporary Sanity in Insider-Trading Law
“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.”
“Too much of the rest of what we write is murdered by being forced into the Procrustean bed of the 700-word op-ed: a space too small to make any but the most pathetic and oversimplified excuse for an argument.”
Where is the Failure?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“Is the problem the "Procrustean Bed of the 700-word op-ed?”
Where is the Failure?, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Procrustean’.
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Words from Blood Meridian
visage, affray, scullery, miasma, mirth, purlieu, tacit, benighted, wickiup, corral, amble, accoutre and 210 more...
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GRE List 1
Words encountered during my GRE preparation.
Fug, Mimsy, Detente, Buncombe, Procrustean, Entente, Ratiocinate, Payola, Condign, Myrmidon, Prolepsis, Peccadillo and 4 more...
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my words
interminable, effete, convocation, philistines, malaise, foibles, deputation, anathematized, morass, stalwart, proselytize, abet and 405 more...
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P
pearlescent, perfidy, periphrasis, peristalsis, peristyle, phonestheme, phosphene, pleonasm, plump for, portmanteau, prelapsarian, prolix and 52 more...
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SHIT I HAD TO LOOK UP
asperity, vicissitude, interregnum, unctuous, hermeneutics, ontology, eschatological, nescient, quorum, paean, perspicacious, cantrip and 40 more...
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