cookie-cutter
See also: cookiecutter and cookie cutter
English
[edit]
Noun
[edit]cookie-cutter (plural cookie-cutters)
- (chiefly attributive) Alternative form of cookie cutter
- 1916, ad in The Ladies' Home Journal, volume 33, page 87:
- Let Us Send You a Trial Package
- Ten cents (stamps or coin) will bring you a One-Cake package, enough for a nice “company cake," and we will include a 10c Dromedary Cookie-Cutter and a Cook Book of Choice Cocoanut[sic] Recipes.
- The Hills Brothers Co. Dept. B, 375 Washington Street New York
- 1986, Deniece Schofield, Escape from the Kitchen, →ISBN:
- Cookie cutters and cake-decorating tools are boxed separately in plastic containers (with lids) so I can stack them up. If you have a large cookie-cutter collection, separate them by holiday or season and package in separate smaller boxes and don't forget to label them accordingly.
- 2002, Mary Engelbreit, Christmas with Mary Engelbreit: Here Comes Santa Claus, →ISBN, page 96:
- For platters of good-looking holiday tea sandwiches, look in your cookie-cutter drawer.
- 2013, Rom Harre, Great Scientific Experiments: Twenty Experiments that Changed our View of the World, Courier Corporation, →ISBN:
- In the passive condition the hand was held palm upwards and the cookie-cutters were pressed on to the sensitive skin of the palm. In the active condition it was the finger tips which were mainly in contact with the cookie-cutter.
- 1916, ad in The Ladies' Home Journal, volume 33, page 87:
Adjective
[edit]cookie-cutter (comparative more cookie-cutter, superlative most cookie-cutter)
- (figuratively, often derogatory) Having a similar appearance or seeming identical; created by some standard or common means, often with the implication that the result is common, boring, or not applicable to all needs.
- The subdivision was nothing but row after row of cookie-cutter houses.
- I don't think a cookie-cutter solution will work in all cases.
- 1927, Alfred Emanuel Smith, New Outlook[1], volume 145:
- Nothing that the uniformity-haters can say is beyond the mark; there is an appalling degree of sameness, of cookie-cutter character and outlook, stamped out with neatness, regularity, and despatch.
- 1933, The Universalist Leader[2], volume 36:
- Our attempt to apply a cookie-cutter to it has landed us in our present morass, and we are floundering aimlessly in this morass because we refuse to admit the obvious fact that our cookie-cutter point of view is all awry
- 1969, Bureau Publication[3]:
- Whether we call it a culture or a subculture, it is always important to avoid the cookie-cutter view of culture, with regard to the individual and to the culture or subculture involved. With regard to the individual, the cookie-cutter view assumes that all individuals in a culture turn out exactly alike, as if they were so many cookies.
- 1997, Herb Miller, Leadership is the Key: Unlocking Your Effectiveness in Ministry[4], page 39:
- All clergy need to know the basics of Bible, theology, Christian education, and church history. Their training is therefore more cookie-cutter than individualized.
- 2004, Lisa Gardner, The Other Daughter[5], page 214:
- “Everything we do is planned and predictable. In the end, medicine is much more cookie-cutter than doctors care to admit, and we can exploit that.”
- 2006, Paul Wesson, Paul Halpern, Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos[6], page 195:
- Yet nature's artisan seems to have crafted untold quantities of protons (and other elementary particles) with identical rest masses. They are infinitely more “cookie cutter” than anything in a cookie manufacturer's wildest dreams.
- 2007, Michael D'Souza, “‘Growing up, I stuck out like a sore thumb’”, in The Financial Times[7]:
- I wanted to find somewhere to live that was unique because everything is very cookie-cutter if you go down most residential streets of Victorian terraces.
- 2008, C. Robert Cargill, “On DVD: Picture This! Is So Cookie-Cutter It Hurts”, in MTV news[8]:
- 2008, Nick Symmonds, Internationalization and Localization Using Microsoft .NET[9], page 144:
- This is so cookie-cutter that you should have no errors. You have yet to type any code!
- 2012, Kenneth L. Fisher, Plan Your Prosperity: The Only Retirement Guide You'll Ever Need, Starting Now–Whether You're 22, 52 or 82[10], page 52:
- One input and only one input matters–your birth year. You can't get much more cookie-cutter than that.
- 2013, Maddy Berner, “Does Arlington's Dating Scene Need More Variety?”, in ARLnow[11]:
- “I think Arlington is very cookie cutter,” she said. “I think you find that the same type of people have the same type of conversations with people over and over again.”
- 2013, Nina Berry, Othersphere[12], page 57:
- The trees were smaller, the houses newer, and thus even more cookie-cutter than I was used to.
- 2014, Carol Blitzer, “No cookie-cutter homes here”, in Palo Alto Weekly[13]:
- “This was an opportunity to imagine something different,” Spiegel said. “It's all about patterns of living. The way people are building houses is so cookie-cutter.”
- 2018, Christopher Phillips, A Child at Heart: Unlocking Your Creativity, Curiosity, and Reason at Every Age and Stage of Life[14], page 138:
- He was sad the most everything done by tailors these days is so cookie-cutter, like it all came off the assembly line.
Usage notes
[edit]First used only in attributive position and without degrees of comparison (from the 1920s); then used freely in predicate position (from the 1990s). Some speakers avoid using it in the predicate position.
Synonyms
[edit]Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]looking or seeming identical
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See also
[edit]Further reading
[edit]- “cookie-cutter”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.