procrustean bed

Definitions

1. An arbitrary standard, especially one that is forced upon people for the sake of conformity and involves the sacrifice of what is useful.
2. Alternative letter-case form of procrustean bed.
   alt-of

Equivalents

4 more languages

SuomiProkrusteen vuode

Nederlandsprocrustesbed

PolskiProkrustowe łoże

Українськапрокрустове ложе

Examples

“1787, Anna Seward, letter to Francis Noel Clarke Mundy dated 10 October, 1787, in Letters of Anna Seward, Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1811, Volume 1, p. 342, Merely to jingle common-place ideas in rhyme, may be easy enough; but to make⟳ fine sense⟳, animated and appropriate description, and beautiful imagery, recline gracefully on that Procrustean bed, is about as easy as to compose music like⟳ Handel or Hedyen, and to paint⟳ like⟳ Reynolds, Romney, and Fuzeli.”

“And now began the real wrong-doing of the Trades’ Unions. As to their decision to work⟳, or not, at such a particular rate of wages, that was either wise or unwise; all error of judgment at the worst. But they had no right to tyrannise over others, and tie them down to their own⟳ procrustean bed.”

“Iron-bound, impersonal ethics, the procrustean bed of rules, he soon saw⟳ at their true value as the deification of averages.”

“The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality.”

“[…] we shouldn’t try⟳ to mould or squeeze⟳ people into the procrustean bed of our popular conception of human virtue of the moment, but permit⟳ them as far as possible to develop⟳ along their own⟳ temperamental lines.”

“[…] but, as the authors had hinted in their discussion of Germany in the Manifesto, that such a conception is not a procrustean bed into which complex reality must be shoved.”

“The reductionist tendencies and impulses of Jaynes's approach⟳ tend⟳ to turn⟳ history into a Procrustean Bed; the body is mangled to fit the theory.”

CEFR level