Gulliver's Travels

Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735) is a work of fiction by Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. Swift's masterpiece, it is his most celebrated work and one of the indisputable classics of the English language.

Cultural Influences

The popularity of Gulliver is such that the term Lilliputian has entered the language as an adjective meaning "small and delicate". There is even a brand of cigar called Lilliput which is, obviously, small.

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In like vein, the term Yahoo is often encountered as a synonym for ruffian or thug. Brobdingnagian also can be occasionally found as a synonym for 'very large' or 'gigantic'.

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In Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, the nadsat term for 'head' is 'Gulliver', which appears to be a pun on 'Gulliver' and голова (Golova) meaning 'head' in Russian.

Related Topics:
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange - Nadsat - Russian

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The film Castle in the Sky features a flying island called Laputa. Hayao Miyazaki has stated the name comes from Swift's book.

Related Topics:
Castle in the Sky - Hayao Miyazaki

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In the discipline of Computer Architecture, the terms big-endian and little-endian are used to describe two possible ways of laying out bytes in memory (see endianness).

Related Topics:
Computer Architecture - Endianness

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