cookie-cutter

cookie-cutter (comparative more cookie-cutter, superlative most cookie-cutter)

1. (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.

   Synonyms: cookie-cuttered, cookie-cutterish

   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.

cookie-cutter (plural cookie-cutters)

1. (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.

cookie-cutter (third-person singular simple present cookie-cutters, present participle cookie-cuttering, simple past and past participle cookie-cuttered)

1. (idiomatic, transitive, uncommon) To produce, design, or approach something in a formulaic, mass-produced or unoriginal manner, often ensuring all the outputs are identical.
   • 1991, Paul Daugherty, “The Write Stuff, What A Shame Nobody Wants To Read It Anymore”, in Cincinnati Magazine‎^[15], volume 24, number 11, page 58:

     Ever since USA Today arrived with its bar graphs, its color-coded weather maps (red means hot, boys and girls!), its stick-figure journalism, its pages cookie-cuttered by brights and factoids and its expert trivializing of everything from wars to nutrition, the craft of newspapering meant nothing more than making sure the percentages took up an accurate slice of the pie chart.

   • 1995, Alan Reder, 75 Best Business Practices for Socially Responsible Companies, page 202:

     in arts funding, and possibly cookie-cuttering the program in other Blue Fish locations across the country.

   • 1995 August 18, David DeCoster, “"HOG"”, in rec.motorcycles.harley‎^[16] (Usenet):

     I agree but they did not do this out of the goodness of their hearts. They did to make money. They cookie cuttered the bikes and quality be dammed.

   • 1996, Denise Breton, Christopher Largent, The Paradigm Conspiracy, How Our Systems of Government, Church, School, and Culture Violate Our Human Potential, page 141:

     Insofar as we got cookie-cuttered by social systems, the control paradigm designed the shapes.

   • 1999 August 27, Dale Wiese, “Woodlands New Layout Method”, in rec.models.railroad‎^[17] (Usenet):

     It ain't cheap. It cost me several hundred dollars more than if I had just cookie cuttered the plywood. Admittedly, my layout is a somewhat larger layout than the 4x8's WS uses as an example. Make sure and do a rough materials estimate before you start, and are willing to pay the convenience cost.

   • 2001, Zyzzyva, Incorporated (publisher), Zyzzyva‎^[18], page 47:

     cookie-cuttered the dash, and forehead prints from who knows how many people buttered the interior of the windshield.

   • 2002, American College of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care, Veterinary Emergency & Critical Care Society (contributor), Dez Hughes (editor), Eighth International Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care Symposium Scientific Proceedings, September 4-8, 2002, San Antonio, Texas, page 361:

     Now corporations and practices want it on VCR, cassette tapes, software, or other electronic media; cookie cutter the training so we do not have to tailor it to the individual.

   • 2007, Lawrence J. Mullen, Las Vegas, Media and Myth, page 47:

     Radio shouldn't be able to be just transplanted, but because Clear Channel and Infinity have cookie cuttered it, it is very transferable.

   • 2010, Roger Corn, Foundational Transactions, page 15:

     Many of the top businesses that we know of started this way — they mastered one thing and then cookie-cuttered the operation to other locations through franchise.

   • 2024 August 5, Joy Wida, “Nizar Qabbani Poems In Arabic With English Translation Pdf”, in tyterfighgak‎^[19] (Usenet):

     To get to my point. The poem's not misogynistic. Rather the opposite. What Qabbani is saying essentially is that a woman who is "like other women" and, as Judith Butler would put it, performs her gender is less appealing than one who will not be cookie-cuttered and fully realizes her humanity.

• First used only in an attributive position and without degrees of comparison (from the 1920s); then used freely in a predicate position (from the 1990s). Some speakers avoid using it in the predicate position.

• “cookie-cutter”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.