"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift

n. Mr. Swift offered a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public.

v. transitive It is sad to see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passerby for an alms.

n. (used as plural) It is sad to see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passerby for an alms.

n. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants.

n. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants.

adj. In the present deplorable state of the kingdom, this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is a very great additional grievance.

n. In the present deplorable state of the kingdom, this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is a very great additional grievance.

adj. In the present deplorable state of the kingdom, this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is a very great additional grievance.

n. A child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a year with little other nourishment.

n. Instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding and partly to the clothing of many thousand people.

n. As to my own part, having turn my thoughts for many years upon this important subject and maturely weighed several proposed schemes, I have always found those schemes full of potential problems.

n. I am assured by our merchants that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to this age, they will not yield above three pounds on the exchange.

n. I am assured by our merchants that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no saleable commodity, and even when they come to this age, they will not yield above three pounds on the exchange.

adj. I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

n. The squire will learn to be a good landlord and grow popular among his tenants while the mother will have eight shillings neat profit and be fit for work till she produces another child.

adj. Those who are more thrifty may flea the carcass; the skin of which will make admirable gloves for ladies and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

n. (note: different meaning from the other "refinement") A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem offered a refinement upon my scheme: he said that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, might find the bodies of young lads and maidens acceptable as substitute for venison.

adj. Some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice as a little bordering upon cruelty.

v. transitive Some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice as a little bordering upon cruelty.

v. transitive In order to justify my friend, he confessed, that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Salmanaazor, a native of the island of Formosa (Taiwan), who told my friend that in his country, when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass as a prime dainty to persons of quality.

n. In order to justify my friend, he confessed, that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Salmanaazor, a native of the island of Formosa (Taiwan), who told my friend that in his country, when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass as a prime dainty to persons of quality.

n. They are dying every day and rotting by cold and famine, filthy, and vermin.

n. They are dying every day and rotting by cold and famine, filthy, and vermin.

v. transitive Since they cannot work and consequently pine away from want of nourishment, if at any time they are accidentally hired to work, they have not strength to perform it; thus, my scheme happily delivers them and the country from the evils to come.

n. (note: different meaning from the other "refinement") The nation's wealth will be increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, besides the profit of a new dish, introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune who have any refinement of taste in our kingdom.

n. This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties.

v. transitive Many other advantages might be enumerated, for instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef.

n. Supposing that one thousand families in this city would be constant customers for infant flesh, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses.

n. Let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients until he has at least some glimpse of hope that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.

n. Let no man talk to me of other expedients: of taxing our absentees, of using nothing but what is of our own product, of utterly rejecting foreign luxury, or of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence, and temperance.