cramp someone's style

Restrict or prevent someone from free action or expression, as in It really cramps my style when Mom hovers around me while I'm making dinner. Although in 1819 Charles Lamb complained that using different inks cramped his style of writing, the present sense of this colloquial term dates only from the early 1900s.

Common Names:

Name	Pronounced	Usage
Martina	mahr-TEE-nah (Italian, Spanish, Dutch), mahr-TEEN-ə (English)	German, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, English, Swedish, Dutch, Ancien
Carley	KAHR-lee	English (Modern)
Jimmy	JIM-ee	English
Petro	PE-tro (Esperanto)	Ukrainian, Esperanto
Vangel	-	Macedonian
Avdotya	-	Russian