straightjacket
straightjacket is the misspelling of straitjacket.
Meaning of straitjacket
Noun
straitjacket (plural straitjackets)
- A jacketlike garment with very long sleeves which can be secured in place, thus preventing the wearer from moving their arms; often used in psychiatric hospitals to prevent patients from injuring themselves or others.
- There’s a couple of people actually wearing duct-tape straitjackets.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 243
- Synonyms:
- straitwaistcoat
- Any situation seen as confining or restricting.
- our ever-increasing bureaucratic straitjacket of regulations
Origin of straightjacket
Due to the confusion between the spelling of strait in straitjacket and the more common word straight; more at straight-laced § Etymology.
Questions about straightjacket
- What is straightjacket the misspelling of?
- Straightjacket is the misspelling of straitjacket.
Words near straightjacket in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: straightjacket (page history and authors); straitjacket (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “straightjacket.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/straightjacket. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.