Also 8 (Swift) -brugg; corruptly 8–9 Strulbrug. [Arbitrarily formed.] In Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, given as the native appellation of ‘the immortals’ in the kingdom of Luggnagg, who were incapable of dying, but after the age of eighty continued to exist in a state of miserable decrepitude, regarded as legally dead, and receiving a small pittance from the state. Hence in allusive uses.
1726. Swift, Gulliver, III. x. 127–8. Struldbrugs. 129 ff. Struldbrugg, -bruggs.
1773. Mrs. Anne Grant, Lett. fr. Mountains (1807), I. vii. 57. The sages here get a great deal of reverence and attention, not usually paid to the struldbruggs of other countries.
1784. H. Walpole, Lett. to H. S. Conway, 25 June. I am very well content to be a Strulbrug, and to exist after I have done being.
1847. H. Miller, First Impr. Eng., xvi. 293. These [trees] are mere hollow trunks, of vast bulk, but stinted foliage…—mere struldbrugs of the forest.
1908. D. C. Pedder, in Contemp. Rev., Dec., 744. There is a danger lest the aged pensioner at home should sink into the condition of a Struldbrug.
attrib. 1844. De Quincey, Greece under Romans, Wks. 1900, VII. 275. All the great Moslem nations being already in a Strulbrug state, and held erect only by the colossal support of Christian powers.
Hence Struldbruggian a., of or pertaining to a Struldbrug. Struldbrugism, the condition or practice of a Struldbrug.
1778. H. Walpole, Lett. to W. Mason, 15 May. I have long taken my doctor’s degree in Strulbruggism, and wonder I concern myself about the affairs of the living. Ibid. (1788), Let. Lady Craven, 11 Dec. When any personage has shone as much as is possible in his or her best walk,… he should take up his strulbrugism, and be heard of no more.
1909. Times Lit. Suppl., 2 Sept., 314/1. Rescuing old authors from the dangers of the Struldbruggian state.
