cramp

A momentary mental lapse in attention, memory, understanding, care, or competence. Sorry boss, I just had a little brain cramp there. What were you saying again? Jack, having a bit of a brain cramp, accidentally sawed the beam completely in two.

To inhibit or interfere with what one wants to do. Ugh, having a test on Monday is really cramping my style. I just want to party all weekend! My parents coming to stay with me this weekend is totally going to cramp my style. When am I supposed to get anything done?

A cramp in one's hand that arises from gripping a pen or pencil too tightly or for too long at a time. I started getting writer's cramp about two hours into the exam. She was taking notes so fastidiously during class that I worried she'd end up with writer's cramp.

Fig. to limit someone in some way. I hope this doesn't cramp your style, but could you please not hum while you work? To ask Bob to keep regular hours would really be cramping his style.

Restrict or prevent someone from free action or expression, as in It really cramps my style when Mom hovers around me while I'm making dinner. Although in 1819 Charles Lamb complained that using different inks cramped his style of writing, the present sense of this colloquial term dates only from the early 1900s.

If someone or something cramps your style, they prevent you from behaving freely in the way that you want. You two relax and celebrate on your own. You don't want us oldies cramping your style. Like more and more women with good jobs, independent spirits and high standards, she believes marriage would cramp her style.

To restrict or prevent from free action or expression.

To restrict someone’s natural actions; to prevent someone from doing his or her best. This seemingly up-to-date locution was first used by Charles Lamb in 1819. He was alluding to writer’s cramp, which constricted the natural flow of one’s pen. Figuratively the term came into use in the early twentieth century. W. Somerset Maugham used it in his early spy novel, Ashenden or: The British Agent (1927): “I can’t help thinking it would cramp your style.”

A painful spasm in the hand that restricts the ability to use a pen or pencil. Back in the Paleozoic Era when people wrote by hand instead of typewriters and then computers (you youngsters can ask your parents or grandparents if you don't believe me), excessive use of a pen or pencil would cause a person's hand to tense up or go into a spasm that made further writing painful or impossible or both. The condition wasn't called “repetitive stress syndrome” back then. It was “writer's cramp,” and that was no excuse for the schoolroom punishment of being made to write “I will not talk in class” one hundred times on the blackboard.