cookie-cutter
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Forms: form: more cookie-cutter
form: most cookie-cutter
Senses: examples: text: The subdivision was nothing but row after row of cookie-cutter houses.
text: I don't think a cookie-cutter solution will work in all cases.
text: 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.
ref: 1927, Alfred Emanuel Smith, New Outlook, volume 145:
text: 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
ref: 1933, The Universalist Leader, volume 36:
text: 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.
ref: 1969, Bureau Publication:
text: All clergy need to know the basics of Bible, theology, Christian education, and church history. Their training is therefore more cookie-cutter than individualized.
ref: 1997, Herb Miller, Leadership is the Key: Unlocking Your Effectiveness in Ministry, page 39:
text: “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.”
ref: 2004, Lisa Gardner, The Other Daughter, page 214:
text: 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.
ref: 2006, Paul Wesson, Paul Halpern, Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos, page 195:
text: 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.
ref: 2007, Michael D'Souza, “‘Growing up, I stuck out like a sore thumb’”, in The Financial Times:
ref: 2008, C. Robert Cargill, “On DVD: Picture This! Is So Cookie-Cutter It Hurts”, in MTV news:
text: This is so cookie-cutter that you should have no errors. You have yet to type any code!
ref: 2008, Nick Symmonds, Internationalization and Localization Using Microsoft .NET, page 144:
text: One input and only one input matters–your birth year. You can't get much more cookie-cutter than that.
ref: 2012, Kenneth L. Fisher, Plan Your Prosperity: The Only Retirement Guide You'll Ever Need, Starting Now–Whether You're 22, 52 or 82, page 52:
text: “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.”
ref: 2013, Maddy Berner, “Does Arlington's Dating Scene Need More Variety?”, in ARLnow:
text: The trees were smaller, the houses newer, and thus even more cookie-cutter than I was used to.
ref: 2013, Nina Berry, Othersphere, page 57:
text: “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.”
ref: 2014, Carol Blitzer, “No cookie-cutter homes here”, in Palo Alto Weekly:
text: He was sad the most everything done by tailors these days is so cookie-cutter, like it all came off the assembly line.
ref: 2018, Christopher Phillips, A Child at Heart: Unlocking Your Creativity, Curiosity, and Reason at Every Age and Stage of Life, page 138:
glosses: 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.
Synonyms: cookie-cutterish
Derived terms: cookie-cutterish
Related terms: one-size-fits-all