All 9 Uses of
expedient
in
Gulliver's Travels
- The best expedient I could think of, was to creep into my house, which I accordingly did; and shutting the gate after me, I went as far as the length of my chain would suffer, and discharged my body of that uneasy load.†
Chpt 1expedient = convenient, speedy, or practical; or an action that is speedy or practical
- My greatest apprehension was for mine eyes, which I should have infallibly lost, if I had not suddenly thought of an expedient.†
Chpt 1
- this magnificent palace would have infallibly been burnt down to the ground, if, by a presence of mind unusual to me, I had not suddenly thought of an expedient.
Chpt 1 *expedient = an action that is speedy or practical -- especially one that accepts tradeoffs due to circumstances
- That if his majesty, in consideration of your services, and pursuant to his own merciful disposition, would please to spare your life, and only give orders to put out both your eyes, he humbly conceived, that by this expedient justice might in some measure be satisfied, and all the world would applaud the lenity of the emperor, as well as the fair and generous proceedings of those who have the honour to be his counsellors.†
Chpt 1expedient = convenient, speedy, or practical; or an action that is speedy or practical
- The treasurer was of the same opinion: he showed to what straits his majesty's revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which would soon grow insupportable; that the secretary's expedient of putting out your eyes, was so far from being a remedy against this evil, that it would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of blinding some kind of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew sooner fat; that his sacred majesty and the council, who are your judges, were, in their own consciences, fully convinced of your guilt, which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death, without the formal proofs required by the strict letter of the law.†
Chpt 1
- An expedient was therefore offered, "that since words are only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such things as were necessary to express a particular business they are to discourse on."†
Chpt 3
- That these ministers, having all employments at their disposal, preserve themselves in power, by bribing the majority of a senate or great council; and at last, by an expedient, called an act of indemnity" (whereof I described the nature to him), "they secure themselves from after-reckonings, and retire from the public laden with the spoils of the nation.†
Chpt 4
- Several others declared their sentiments to the same purpose, when my master proposed an expedient to the assembly, whereof he had indeed borrowed the hint from me.†
Chpt 4
- the assembly did therefore exhort him either to employ me like the rest of my species, or command me to swim back to the place whence I came: that the first of these expedients was utterly rejected by all the Houyhnhnms who had ever seen me at his house or their own;†
Chpt 4expedients = actions that are speedy, practical, or convenient
Definitions:
-
(1)
(expedient) convenient and practical, but sometimes not the best or most moral choice
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, expedient can also imply that an action was taken for reasons of self-interest rather than for moral reasons.
In the sense of speedy, the word is less commonly used today than in the past; though it may still be used as in "an expedient end" or "an expedient amount of time," or "We are depending upon your expediency."