procrustean

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The wild variety of American life can never be clamped down on the Procrustean bed of a single form of schooling.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 9, 2026

But there was a danger in trying to fit this new, American elite onto the Procrustean bed of every elite that had come before it.

From The Guardian • Mar. 3, 2020

There is grandeur in this new view of life, so why force it into the Procrustean bed of nineteenth-century theorizing?

From Scientific American • Jun. 15, 2019

It’s a modern version of the Procrustean bed, and the people no longer have a say.

From New York Times • Jun. 28, 2016

There are, moreover, occasional difficulties in this method of scansion, some lines refusing to accommodate themselves to the Procrustean methods of sixteenth-century editors, and exactly similar anomalies are to be found in Spenser.

From Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration Stage in England by Greg, Walter W.