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)
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straitjackets,
present (3rd person singular)
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straitjacketed,
past participle, past
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straitjacketing
present participle
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:
Opinion is divided on whether these are sensible building blocks for the economy which allow living standards to improve, or a "dysfunctional" economic straitjacket.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
In a nod to business leaders, he has promised to shield entrepreneurs "from an unbearable fiscal and regulatory straitjacket".
From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026
For all its aspiration of freedom, it is a straitjacket that cannot be removed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 17, 2026
It makes the whole project less overwhelming — more a compass than a straitjacket.
From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2025
And if you think having Problems in American Democracy is a fun way to end the day, you need a snug-fitting straitjacket.
From "The Pigman" by Paul Zindel
Humanmade levees, dikes and other flood-control measures act like straitjackets on these rivers.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
Montgomery’s school board president, William R. Thomas III, said, “We’ve been concerned in recent years with the stereotyped nature of school architecture,” referring to the “brick and mortar straitjackets of education.”
From Washington Post ● Sep. 26, 2022
Then the lights went up, the walkways started moving, and out came the models — barefoot, staring catatonically ahead, in white clothing that resembled nothing so much as straitjackets of many styles.
From New York Times ● Sep. 23, 2019
To start: Immobile models were conveyed down a moving runway wearing white canvas straitjackets - the most extreme expression of the uniforms that Alessandro Michele called “a strong sign of oppression.”
From Washington Times ● Sep. 22, 2019
Straitlaced people who go over the edge may find themselves in straitjackets.
From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner
Chastain may not wear a corset, but her Nora is straitjacketed all the same.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 9, 2023
“Cape Coral is literally straitjacketed by the sins of the grandfathers: the ‘Mad Men’ of the ’50s selling lots, never really thinking beyond Grandma and Grandpa wanting to retire.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2022
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
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 Charles Reade
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
Though labor and industry grumbled at his straitjacketing of wages and prices, the rise in the cost of living was only 18%, compared to a U.S. rise of 25%.
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.
