straitjacket
or straight·jack·et
a garment made of strong material and designed to bind the arms, as of a violently disoriented person.
anything that severely confines, constricts, or hinders: Conventional attitudes can be a straitjacket, preventing original thinking.
to put in or as in a straitjacket: Her ambition was straitjacketed by her family.
Origin of straitjacket
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use straitjacket in a sentence
We cannot imprison Germany in an economic strait jacket if her territorial neighbors are willing to trade with her.
Polly turned to the maid, “Go down and send it away––no, tell the driver to go to the asylum for a strait-jacket.”
The Cup of Fury | Rupert HughesI'd as soon talk to a man in a padded cell and a strait-jacket.
The Firefly Of France | Marion Polk AngellottiLook at him and you wouldn't see a thing out of the way with him except that he'd be wearing a strait-jacket.
Sundry Accounts | Irvin S. CobbAnd on the instant I was Darrell Standing, the life-convict, lying in his strait-jacket in solitary.
The Jacket (The Star-Rover) | Jack London
British Dictionary definitions for straitjacket
/ (ˈstreɪtˌdʒækɪt) /
Also called: straightjacket a jacket made of strong canvas material with long sleeves for binding the arms of violent prisoners or mentally ill patients
a severe restriction or limitation
(tr) to confine in or as if in a straitjacket
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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