struldbruggian

comparative more struldbruggian · superlative most struldbruggian

1. Alternative letter-case form of Struldbruggian.

   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.

   2002, Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life

   1 more example

   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.

   1968, University of Toronto Quarterly, volume 38, page 72

comparative more Struldbruggian · superlative most Struldbruggian · alternative struldbruggian

1. Having or relating to an unsatisfactory form of immortality accompanied by aging and disease.

   Critics of techniques to lengthen the human life span often paint a Struldbruggian picture of our future. In these scenarios, a large elderly population is kept alive only through incredibly expensive medical techniques paid for by the young.

   2005, Ramez Naam, “Methuselah’s Genes”, in More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, New York, N.Y.: Broadway Books, →ISBN, pages 80–81

   2 more examples

   The methods employed to select economic and political leaders must be modified in a manner suited to allow, in the future, a sufficient number of places to those under (say) fifty; otherwise, given both present methods of selection and prospective changes in age composition, too much power may pass into the hands of gerontocrats with a Struldbruggian incapacity for fashioning or selecting economic and political policies suited to the needs of the times.

   1949, Logan Wilson, William L[ester] Kolb, “Societies: Demographic and Ecological Elements”, in Robert K[ing] Merton, editor, Sociological Analysis: An Introductory Text and Case Book, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace & World, →OCLC, part 3 (Basic Aspects of Social Relations), page 404, columns 1–2

   Here are all the elements of a truly creative scepticism blended for once into a manageable and yet an infinitely expandable pattern. It might have required at least ten more years (if Adams could have counted on escaping Struldbruggian senescence) for him to set this insight to work.

   1966, Margaret L[enore] Wiley, “Henry Adams, Uneasy Sceptic”, in Creative Sceptics, London: George Allen and Unwin, →OCLC, section V, page 307