draconian

comparative more draconian · superlative most draconian · alternative Draconian

1. Very severe, cruel, or harsh.

   The mayor announced draconian budget cuts today.

   3 more examples

   The conflict in the countryside resulted in a far more draconian punishment. The Southern Cross flag flew over the camps of striking shearers, who in revenge for their victimisation burned grass, fences, buildings and even riverboats[…]

   2009, Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia, page 125

   Perhaps lessons had already been learned from the Draconian infrastructure cuts on the Waterloo-Exeter route.

   2020 April 8, Howard Johnston, “East-ended? When the ECML was at risk”, in Rail, page 65

   And that movement, while it was eventually crushed through the extensive use of the draconian lese majeste law, shattered the taboo, by calling openly, for the first time, for the powers and financing of the monarchy to be accountable.

   2023 May 8, Jonathan Head, “Thailand election: The young radicals shaking up politics”, in BBC News, archived from the original on 23 Aug 2023

   Synonyms: draconic, draconical, Orwellian, rigid, rigorous, strict, stringent

comparative more draconian · superlative most draconian

1. obsoleteexcept in fictionOf, relating to, characteristic of, or resembling a dragon.

   The dragon came low to the earth. It defied every image of a draconian being Kulp had ever seen.

   2006, Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates, Book Two, →ISBN, page 384

   1 more example

   A large sandwyrm (which isn't to be confused with a sandworm) popped its draconian head from the earth.

   2009, Jacob Silvia, Qhoenix, page 73

   Synonyms: draconic, draconical, draconine, dragonesque, dragonish, dragonlike, dragony

plural draconians

1. fictionA creature resembling a dragon.

   ... Draconians keep for pets . Vithacan - Symbionts that attach themselves to other creatures and survive off their emotional energy . Soul suckers is a disrespectful term for their race . Zelerians Race of squid like creatures with few[…]

   2021 August 31, Miranda Martin, Draconians Shared Bride, Looking Glass Publications INC

   2 more examples

   ... Draconians are fast. They'll fly to meet us no doubt. I remember after a few moments that the human queen is here as well. I call out to her, “Human queen, you are rescued by the Draconians. Come forth and know that you are safe under[…]

   (Can we date this quote?), Miranda Martin, Draconians Queen, Looking Glass Publications INC

   ... draconians lifted the webbed bodies of the kender's friends and bore them away . Other draconians followed behind , carrying the companions ' packs and their weapons . As the draconians marched along a path very near the hidden kender[…]

   2006, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Dragonlance Chronicles, →ISBN

comparative more Draconian · superlative most Draconian

1. Of or relating to Draco, the first legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece.

   Aristotle, Constit., 3, 6 (speaking of the pre-Draconian age): […]

   1918, University of Pennsylvania Law Review and American Law Register, page 348

   4 more examples

   As to the details of the Draconian constitution, it is certainly surprising to find so many institutions and offices referred to, which had hitherto been only known to exist at a later date.

   1892, F. G. Kenyon, editor, Αθηναιων Πολιτεια: Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens, page 12

   Not a line of the Draconian laws has been preserved in their original form.

   1893, John Clark Ridpath, Great Races of Mankind: An Account of the Ethnic Origin, Primitive Estate, Early Migrations, Social Evolution, and Present Conditions and Promise of the Principal Families of Men […], volume III, Cincinnati, Ohio: The Jones Brothers Publishing Company, page 154

   The board of fifty-one “jurors” mentioned in connection with the code seems, in Adcock’s opinion, to constitute a new Draconian court.

   1972, Frank N[orthen] Magill, E. G. Weltin, editors, Great Events from History: Ancient and Medieval Series, volumes I (4000 - 1 B.C.), Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, Incorporated, →LCCN, page 155

   This table was probably a Solonian preface or preamble to the Draconian laws: its provisions embody the changes that followed from Solon’s reforms.

   1998, Edwin Carawan, Rhetoric and the Law of Draco, Oxford: Clarendon Press, published 2004, →ISBN, page 91

2. Alternative letter-case form of draconian.

   Perhaps lessons had already been learned from the Draconian infrastructure cuts on the Waterloo-Exeter route.

   2020 April 8, Howard Johnston, “East-ended? When the ECML was at risk”, in Rail, page 65

   4 more examples

   This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy?

   1839, Edgar Allan Poe, William Wilson

   Cow killing in Cashmere is punished as a worse crime than homicide! Travellers to Cashmere in those days — entering the valley by the Shupeyon route — will perhaps remember the skeleton of a man hanging in rusty chains from a prominent bough of the first large tree which met the eye on emerging from the Heerpore pass. That wretch was hanged for vaccicide…a terrible example of Maharajah Golaub Sing’s Draconian laws!

   1887, David John Falconer Newall, The Highlands of India II: Field Sports and Travel in India, sect. i, ch. iv, p. 49

   [T]o enact a Draconian law that if anybody who does not know anything about the subject thinks when you are trying to get a bullock into a truck when he will not go you are acting cruelly he can inform the police, and you can be arrested there and then and hauled up before a Justice of the Peace.

   1908 August 6, William Herbert Herries, “Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Bill”, in New Zealand. Parliamentary Debates. Fourth Session, Sixteenth Parliament (House of Representatives), volume 144, Wellington: John Mackay, government printer, →OCLC, page 188, column 1

   "They have effectively put a gun to our head and said if we don't accept their proposal they will impose a more Draconian contract."

   2007 December 21, Rebecca Smith, “Gordon Brown 'to force GPs to work evenings'”, in Telegraph, UK, retrieved 27 Nov 2018