procrustean bed
- noun
- /prəˈkrʌstiːən bɛd/
- Formal
:
cama de Procusto
- Imposing a set answer on all students creates a procrustean bed that disregards their unique perspectives.
Examples
-
The school’s strict dress code felt like a procrustean bed that stifled students' individuality.
-
John Finnis forces Newman’s thought into this procrustean bed without relating that letter to the larger corpus of Newman’s writings.
Academic text (1992) -
Her policies were a procrustean bed that forced everyone to follow the same procedures, regardless of their needs.
Synonyms
A strict rule applied to everyone without room for differences
A strict rule applied the same to everyone that ignores personal differences
Antonyms
How Rigid
- Formal
28
8.9
- Formal
14
3.4
∞
1.0
675
2.7
344
3.1
759
1.4
Surface Forms
Morphology
Procrustean + bed
The adjective 'Procrustean' already encodes harshly enforced uniformity, so combined with the noun 'bed' the phrase denotes a metaphorical 'place' or system that forces conformity. However, the use of 'bed' in a non-literal, metaphorical sense (and the phrase's reliance on mythic/cultural reference) means the exact sense is not fully predictable from the parts for a B1 learner, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Procrustean bed comes from an old Greek story about a man named Procrustes who kept one bed and forced every guest to fit it, stretching people who were too short and cutting the legs of people who were too long. One popular story says that cruel picture explains why the phrase means 'a harsh system that forces everyone to be the same'.