Struldbrug
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Struldbrug, the name given to a fictional race of senile immortals inhabiting the island of Luggnagg who are legally declared dead at the age of 80 and continue to age, coined by Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels.
Pronunciation
Noun
Struldbrug (plural Struldbrugs)
- (literary) Someone or something that is immortal or extremely ancient, but which may have persisted past the point where it should be dead.
- 1887 April 9, Sabine Baring-Gould, “Richard Cable, the Lightshipman”, in Chambers's Journal, volume 4, number 171, page 229:
- It might be thought a precedent, and he would not like it; he who is to inherit the place when that old Struldbrug, Gotham, is withered and cast away, when that old log is so barnacle-bored as to be worthless.
- 1892, Donizetti Muller, Links from Broken Chains, page 64:
- Antique memorial, exiled to Egypt's shame, Forlorn Struldbrug! why should we covet thee?
- 1908, Samuel Butler, Essays on Life, Art, and Science, page 32:
- To me he is, like the greater number of classics in all ages and countries, a literary Struldbrug, rather than a true ambrosia-fed immortal.
- 1940 March, Theodore Spencer, “Aldous Huxley: The Latest Phase”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN, review of After Many a Summer:
- Apparently immortal, an anthropoid and vital Struldbrug, the Earl, 201 years old, is a red-haired naked beast, his forehead jutting out like a shelf.