straitjacket
Americannoun
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a garment made of strong material and designed to bind the arms, as of a violently disoriented person.
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anything that severely confines, constricts, or hinders.
Conventional attitudes can be a straitjacket, preventing original thinking.
verb (used with object)
noun
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Also called: straightjacket. a jacket made of strong canvas material with long sleeves for binding the arms of violent prisoners or mentally ill patients
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a severe restriction or limitation
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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straitjacketsimple
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straitjacketssimple
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have straitjacketedperfect
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has straitjacketedperfect
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am straitjacketingprogressive
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are straitjacketingprogressive
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is straitjacketingprogressive
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have been straitjacketingperfect progressive
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has been straitjacketingperfect progressive
Past
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straitjacketedsimple
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had straitjacketedperfect
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was straitjacketingprogressive
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were straitjacketingprogressive
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had been straitjacketingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of straitjacket
Explanation
A jacket-shaped restraint that's meant to confine a violent person safely is called a straitjacket. Straitjackets were once commonly used in psychiatric hospitals. These days you're much more likely to see a straitjacket used as a prop in magic show than in a hospital. Illusionists use straitjackets to perform escape tricks, since they're famously difficult (if not impossible) to wriggle out of. Straitjackets are made of sturdy material and hold the wearer's arms tightly against the body. Before the invention of modern psychiatric medicines and techniques, mentally ill patients were frequently restrained in straitjackets to protect themselves and others.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
For all its aspiration of freedom, it is a straitjacket that cannot be removed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
The first three weeks saw an 8-year-old aerialist, a 74-year-old comedian, a laser-performing duo from Vietnam and a Las Vegas magician who hung from the ceiling in a straitjacket.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 10, 2026
And she suggested replacing the contentious Let's Create strategy, which she said was widely seen as a straitjacket, "stifling artistic innovation and creativity".
From BBC ● Dec. 16, 2025
It makes the whole project less overwhelming — more a compass than a straitjacket.
From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2025
Perhaps the place freed him from a straitjacket of grief.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
These included freeing himself from chains, ropes, and straitjackets under water.
From BBC ● Apr. 11, 2025
Humanmade levees, dikes and other flood-control measures act like straitjackets on these rivers.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
This extends to the actual garments, items like argyle straitjackets that many would consider too wacky to wear.
From New York Times ● Mar. 4, 2022
If Corsi and Fenwick get me, call the guys with the straitjackets.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 30, 2020
She learns surveillance techniques, performs backflips, and masters the removal of handcuffs and straitjackets.
From "Genuine Fraud" by E. Lockhart
This oasis, part of the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, is one of the few spots where the Los Angeles River isn’t straitjacketed in concrete, allowing it to flow unencumbered through a thriving riparian forest.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2024
Straightened, dredged and straitjacketed the rivers with levees.
From Seattle Times ● May 29, 2022
He wanted to be able to make his own entertainment, he told me, because so much around him felt straitjacketed, “trying to make different versions of the same thing.”
From New York Times ● Dec. 7, 2021
These steep-sided, straitjacketed streams lost the ability to spill onto their floodplains and recharge aquifers.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 7, 2018
And so it was, that justice handcuffed, straitjacketed, blistered, and impartial, sent from its bed of torture a beam through Cooper's tough hide to his inner heart.
From Hard Cash by Reade, Charles
In 1939, as the straitjacketing of the L.A.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 28, 2023
In other words, Cohen accuses traditional sensory science of artificially straitjacketing tasters in order to achieve a false objectivity.
From The Guardian ● May 23, 2018
They seemed to enjoy the idea, he added, “that these forces were straitjacketing them, whether it was true or not.”
From New York Times ● Apr. 5, 2012
The straitjacketing of the Mississippi began with an obnoxious Army engineer named Andrew Humphreys, who lost 3,000 soldiers in the charge at Fredericksburg and later marveled, "I felt more like a god than a man!"
From Time ● May 12, 2011
An elder statesman of U.S. finance this week warned against straitjacketing the nation's rearmament economy with price & wage controls.
From Time Magazine Archive
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
