struldbrug means someone or something that is immortal or extremely ancient, but which may have persisted past the point where it should be dead. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why “struldbrug” is a great word
A human cursed with immortality but not eternal youth, doomed to age interminably into utter physical and mental ruin. Coined by Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift in his 1726 satirical novel Gulliver's Travels as the name for a fictional race of wretched immortals on the island of Luggnagg. Unlike an 'immortal,' who may exist in timeless vigor, or an 'ancient,' who simply denotes great age, a struldbrug is defined by the relentless accretion of infirmity. It is the unhealing wound that forever festers, the mind reduced to a leaky vessel that can hold no new memory, and the brittle skeleton groaning under its own weight for centuries—the ultimate horror of a sentence without reprieve.
Etymology
From Struldbrug, the name given to a fictional race of senile immortals inhabiting the island of Luggnagg who are legally declared dead at the age of 80 and continue to age, coined by Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels.
noun
- Someone or something that is immortal or extremely ancient, but which may have persisted past the point where it should be dead.“It might be thought a precedent, and he would not like it; he who is to inherit the place when that old Struldbrug, Gotham, is withered and cast away, when that old log is so barnacle-bored as to be worthless.”