Procrustean

Related to Procrustean: Procrustean bed

Procrustean bed

A situation or place that someone is forced into, often violently. In Greek mythology, the giant Procrustes would capture people and then stretch or cut off their limbs to make them fit into his bed. This new law creates a Procrustean bed designed to get those people deemed undesirable by the local government to move out of the neighborhood.
See also: bed, Procrustean

Procrustean solution

The forceful, unnatural manipulation of someone or something to fit a rigid set of conditions or requirements. In Greek mythology, the giant Procrustes would capture people and then stretch or cut off their limbs to make them fit into his bed. While in theory the idea of raising the minimum wage to a certain threshold for every business in the country seems like a positive, it is really a Procrustean solution that forces conformity to an impossible standard on many businesses that simply cannot afford to acquiesce.
See also: Procrustean, solution
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a Procrustean bed

something designed to produce conformity by unnatural or violent means.
In Greek mythology, Procrustes was a robber who tied his victims to a bed, either stretching or cutting off their legs in order to to make them fit it.
1998 Spectator Intellectuals often employ their intellects for foolish purposes, forcing facts onto a Procrustean bed of theory.
See also: bed, Procrustean
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary

Procrustean solution

Adjusting the facts to suit the situation. In Greek mythology, Procrustes (his name meant “stretcher”) lived in a roadside house in which he invited travelers for a meal and a night's rest. The guests stayed in a bed whose length, according to Procrustes, exactly matched anyone who slept in it. And it did—after the host stretched a smaller guest on a rack or chopped the legs off a taller guest until he fit the bed. This practice ended only when the hero Theseus killed Procrustes by giving him a dose of his own medicine. Someone who alters the facts by, for example, overestimating or underreporting data is said to offer a Procrustean solution.
See also: Procrustean, solution
Endangered Phrases by Steven D. Price
See also:
  • a Procrustean bed
  • Procrustean bed
  • Procrustean solution
  • crash into
  • crash into (someone or something)
  • fleece
  • go in search of the golden fleece
  • a/the sword of Damocles hangs over (one)
  • Damocles
  • Damocles' sword hangs over (one's) head
References in periodicals archive
Best of both worlds: Comment on "(Re) Making the procrustean bed?
Researching the Co-Existence and Continuity of Standardization and Customization in Healthcare: A Response to Recent Commentaries
Yet, a "one size fits all" approach is the Procrustean bed that RiskMetrics is seeking to impose with its new approach.
Going off the GRId: there are sound reasons why boards should not blindly follow the new RiskMetrics model
Still, their peripatetic day remains highly amusing, for old Dad is quite a character, while his son, dour and melancholic by comparison, rouses himself by and by from his procrustean bed of self-tormenting freedom to realize that he loves the old man, despite the differences time and temperament have wrought on their mutual regard.
Emil Hakl. Of Kids & Parents
The problem is when society (or elements thereof) try and force all media to conform to the Procrustean bed of whatever happens to be popular in media.
The information bubble
Arnold's literary criticism is predictably Procrustean: "Shakespeare invariably represents the relation between representative and represented as hierarchical and antagonistic" (13).
The Third Citizen: Shakespeare's Theater and the Early Modern House of Commons
Although he is aware that strict definitions, especially if not deeply contextually located, can get caught in a procrustean bed, Olson's definition of "science" may have already short-sheeted the project.
Science and Scientism in Nineteenth-Century Europe
To her credit, Howe does not try to fit the peculiar saint into this or any other Procrustean bed.
Elizabeth Teresa Howe. Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World
Once again, it is the avoidance of Procrustean ideological templates that furnishes the dynamism of the conservative's vision.
The range and originality of conservative reflection
The Procrustean bed of physics tells us that such expansion comes at the price of penetration.
XTP marks the spot: Hornady's XTP bullet excels at both penetration and expansion--with outstanding accuracy
The problem is not so much the flaws of this book, but what it shows of the current preference for grand theses in which major scholars fit everything into a procrustean bed.
The Monopoly of Violence: Why Europeans Hate Going to War
While the book, "A Whole New World: Great Insights into Transformation & Fulfillment-The Gospel of John," gives the appearance that it is going to help the reader work through the Gospel of John, and give a greater grasp of the Gospel and how it personally applies, instead the book is more of a reflection on the author's preconceived mold into which the chosen texts are made to fit like a Procrustean bed.
A Whole New World
The whole enterprise also has something Procrustean about it.
No tolerance for human nature
If Possible Scotlands errs on the side of selectivity and over-emphasis, it is because it has a good case, and there is plenty of room to make up in countering those critics who have--and this is amply demonstrated--trimmed Scott on a Procrustean bed to suit a predetermined agenda.
McCracken-Flesher, Caroline. Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow
But the balance of the book is a procrustean effort to identify Old Mexico's indisputably Portuguese crypto-Jews as modern New Mexico's indisputably Spanish founding fathers.
To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico