Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Absurdly impractical or visionary, especially to the neglect of more useful activity.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Pertaining to Laputa, an imaginary flying island described in Swift's “Gulliver's Travels,” whose inhabitants were engaged in all sorts of ridiculous projects; hence, chimerical; absurd; ridiculous; impossible.
- noun An inhabitant of Laputa; a visionary.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Of or pertaining to Laputa, an imaginary flying island described in
Gulliver's Travels as the home of chimerical philosophers.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective
fanciful ;preposterous ;absurd inscience orphilosophy
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective not practical or realizable; speculative
- adjective relating to or characteristic of the imaginary country of Laputa or its people
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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They utilize instead the services of a "Flapper" to hit them in the face with a bladder full of dried peas when another Laputan wishes to communicate something.
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The new kindle from Amazon, like its several failed predecessors are Laputan biofuel technology and tailoring.
contra kindle 2008
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On the marshes of Iraq, three reports from Laputan Logic.
Archive 2006-03-01 2006
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Gulliver also wonders why Laputan coats fit so badly until he visits a tailor and finds himself being fitted by quadrant and compass.
contra kindle 2008
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On the marshes of Iraq, three reports from Laputan Logic.
Prunings XIX 2006
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Wrapped up, like a Laputan, in intense thought, and possibly sometimes in no thought at all (which, I believe, is very often the case with absent people), he does not know his most intimate acquaintance by sight, or answers them as if he were at cross purposes.
Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman 2005
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Laputan, who passed his days in extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, could have reached such a height of delirium as to rave about the time when a man should paint his miniature by looking at a blank tablet, and
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Laputan tailors, which, though projected from the most refined geometrical data and the most profound calculations, he found to be the worst fit he ever put on his back.
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In Part III he names Imagination, Fancy, and Invention as desirable faculties in which the Laputan mathematicians (in spite of their love of music) were wholly lacking.
Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gullivers Travels 1946
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“Imagination, Fancy, and Invention” as desirable faculties in which the Laputan mathematicians (in spite of their love of music) were wholly lacking.
Collected Essays 1900
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