a. and sb. In Swift Laputian. [f. Laputa, the flying island in Gulliver’s Travels, whose inhabitants were addicted to visionary projects: see -AN, -IAN.] A. adj. Of or pertaining to Laputa; hence, chimerical, visionary, absurd. B. sb. An inhabitant of Laputa.
1726. Swift, Gulliver, III. ii. (heading), The Humours and Dispositions of the Laputians described.
1866. Herschel, Fam. Lect., ii. 62. After all, Swift’s idea of extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which he attributes to his Laputan philosophers, may not be so very absurd.
1870. O. W. Holmes, Mechanism in Th. & Mor., in Old Vol. of Life (1891), 293, note. It is curious to compare the Laputan idea of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers with George Stephenson’s famous saying about coal.
So Laputically adv. (nonce-wd.), after the fashion of the Laputans.
a. 1849. Poe, R. H. Horne, Wks. 1864, III. 426. Occupied, Laputically, in their great work of a progress that never progresses.
