struldbruggian

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search

English

[edit]
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Etymology

[edit]

From the name of a class of people in Jonathan Swift's 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels, who are immortal but remain susceptible to aging and disease.

Adjective

[edit]

struldbruggian (comparative more struldbruggian, superlative most struldbruggian)

  1. Having or relating to an unsatisfactory form of immortality accompanied by aging and disease.
    • 1968, University of Toronto Quarterly, volume 38, page 72:
      Tithonus, reaching for immortality, achieves only a struldbruggian kind of existence; and Ulysses in his infinite search for knowledge sets out with his mariners on that final voyage that leads them only deathward.
    • 2002, Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life:
      In short, if we imagine a person continuing to live indefinitely while remaining vulnerable to such evils as disease, injury, and aging, we are in effect imagining a struldbruggian immortality.