draconic

comparative more draconic · superlative most draconic

1. Relating to or suggestive of dragons.

   There are amongst the constellations four great draconic or serpent-like forms.

   1908, E. Walter Maunder, chapter V, in The Astronomy of the Bible, New York: Mitchell Kennerley, page 196

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

comparative more draconic · superlative most draconic · alternative Draconic

1. datedrareVery severe or strict; draconian.

   […] they no land / Doom'd to bewail the blasphemy of laws / Making kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause.

   1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza LXIV, page 37

   2 more examples

   The sexual instinct can hardly be changed by prescriptions; I doubt whether all laws against homosexual intercourse, even the most draconic, have ever been able to extinguish the peculiar desire of anybody born with homosexual tendencies.

   1932, Edvard Westermarck, chapter VIII, in Ethical Relativity, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, page 248

   In the first months after the October Revolution Lenin was already demanding "the most decisive, draconic measures to tighten up discipline."

   1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, translated by Thomas P. Whitney, The Gulag Archipelago, Harper & Row, published 1973, Vol. 2, Part III, pp. 9-10

   Synonyms: draconical

comparative more Draconic · superlative most Draconic

1. Alternative letter-case form of draconic (“very severe or strict; draconian”).

   […] they no land / Doom'd to bewail the blasphemy of laws / Making kings' rights divine, by some Draconic clause.

   1816, Lord Byron, “Canto III”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto the Third, London: […] [F]or John Murray, […], →OCLC, stanza LXIV, page 37

   2 more examples

   Beggars, cut-purses, swindlers, tavern-bilks, broken life-guardsmen, foreign counts, native highwaymen, and some poor honest unfortunates, the victims of a Draconic law of debtor and creditor, all found their Patmos turn out to be a mere shifting quicksand.

   1860 February, [George Augustus Sala], “William Hogarth: Painter, Engraver, and Philosopher. Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time. I.—Little Boy Hogarth.”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume I, number 2, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 189

   The inference is, therefore, that they were all the property of this Nicholas de la Reynie, who was, as I understand, the gentleman specially concerned with the maintenance and execution of the Draconic laws of that epoch.

   1902 November, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Leather Funnel”, in McClure’s Magazine, volume XX, number 1, New York, N.Y.; London: The S[amuel] S[idney] McClure Co., published 1903, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 20, column 1