LAPUTA

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does Laputa mean? 

• LAPUTA (noun)
  The noun LAPUTA has 1 sense:

1. a land imagined by Jonathan Swift where impractical projects were pursued and practical projects neglected

  Familiarity information: LAPUTA used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LAPUTA (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A land imagined by Jonathan Swift where impractical projects were pursued and practical projects neglected

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("Laputa" is a kind of...):

fictitious place; imaginary place; mythical place (a place that exists only in imagination; a place said to exist in fictional or religious writings)

Derivation:

Laputan (not practical or realizable; speculative)

Laputan (relating to or characteristic of the imaginary country of Laputa or its people)

 Context examples 

I ventured to offer to the learned among them a conjecture of my own, that Laputa was quasi lap outed; lap, signifying properly, the dancing of the sunbeams in the sea, and outed, a wing; which, however, I shall not obtrude, but submit to the judicious reader.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The sum of his discourse was to this effect: That about forty years ago, certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion, and, after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region: that these persons, upon their return, began to dislike the management of every thing below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics, upon a new foot.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I therefore told the officer, that having been shipwrecked on the coast of Balnibarbi, and cast on a rock, I was received up into Laputa, or the flying island (of which he had often heard), and was now endeavouring to get to Japan, whence I might find a convenience of returning to my own country.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)