straitjacket

The fate of a franchise depends on cramming them into a vast, complex puzzle of resource allocation that’s harder to navigate than a swimming pool in a straitjacket.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026

“I feel trapped in a tuxedo, like I have claustrophobia,” Almodóvar says, hugging his body as if he’s wearing a straitjacket.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2026

Locking money into a restricted account felt like voluntarily returning to the kind of financial straitjacket they just escaped, he said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 31, 2026

It makes the whole project less overwhelming — more a compass than a straitjacket.

From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2025

When they bound Shadrack into a straitjacket, he was both relieved and grateful, for his hands were at last hidden and confined to whatever size they had attained.

From "Sula" by Toni Morrison

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

She learns surveillance techniques, performs backflips, and masters the removal of handcuffs and straitjackets.

From "Genuine Fraud" by E. Lockhart

“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

At a time when theater, the fabulous invalid, is straitjacketed by the pandemic, it’s heartening and a little wistful-making to have it recalled in all its messy midcentury glory.

From New York Times ● Jan. 21, 2022

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 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