Crossword clues for procrustean
procrustean
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Procrustean \Pro*crus"te*an\, a. Of or pertaining to Procrustes, or the mode of torture practiced by him; producing conformity by violent means; as, the Procrustean treatment; a Procrustean limit. See Procrustes.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1846 in figurative sense, "violently making conformable to standard," from Procrustes, mythical robber of Attica who seized travelers, tied them to his bed, and either stretched their limbs or lopped of their legs to make them fit it. The name is Greek Prokroustes "one who stretches," from prokrouein "to beat out, stretch out," from pro- "before" (see pro-) + krouein "to strike."
Wiktionary
a. Enforcing strict conformity through disregard of individual differences or special circumstances. (from 17th c.)
Usage examples of "procrustean".
I should have recognized also the other Greek legend: the Procrustean Bed.
But except for the first landing parties, no one was taken to the Procrustean Beds.
You spun me such a beautiful, logical horror story of the Procrustean Bed.
We should not see their intellects stunted by Procrustean attempts to teach them all the same accomplishments, to the neglect, most often, of any sound practical training of their faculties.
But there he was, stretched out tautly, trying to still his churning thoughts and succeeding no better than all the agitated who had occupied that same procrustean bed.
The object in choosing the political capital is average nearness of approach from the various confines of the State but commerce submits to no such Procrustean laws in selecting her capitals and consequently she has placed Detroit on the borders of Michigan, on the shore of the neck of water which joins Lake Huron to Lake Erie, through which all the trade must flow which comes down from Lakes Michigan, Superior, and Huron on its way to the Eastern States and to Europe.
High over Cincinnati, heading back to New York, I writhed in my procrustean airline seat and reflected upon the Second Age of Man.
There was Huston, the acid-bath man, and Campbell, who brought the procrustean bed to Ealing.
But whereas the scientist simplifies by a process of analysis and isolation, the politician can only simplify by compulsion, by a Procrustean process of chopping and stretching designed to make the living organism conform to a certain easily understood and readily manipulated mechanical pattern.
This Procrustean approach has occasionally shed light on the most symmetrical kinds of collective behavior, such as the perfectly synchronized state where all the junctions oscillate in lock-step.
Humanity, he would not have failed to perceive that the attempt to measure the capacities and requirements of Society by the capacities and requirements of any individual or individuals, how catholic soever they may be, is but the repetition of the Procrustean principle on a broader basis, and that a reconstructive movement established on such a foundation could not meet the wants of this individualized epoch.
Surely, it was argued, the contraction had been severe enough to satisfy the advocates of the most stringent Procrustean policy.
The father of literature became a Procrustean, grammatical bed on which we were to be stretched, and it did nearly exterminate every one of us.
Shakespeare tantalizes us with the comfort to be had from ideologically Procrustean beds to which he refuses to tailor his matter.
HF output stage arranged around the perimeter of a crazy pentacle surrounding the procrustean contraption.