struldbruggian

English

Etymology

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

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.