“a Modest Proposal” Definition & Meaning

Definition

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Examples

“A Modest Proposal” Cultural

1. (1729) An essay by Jonathan Swift, often called a masterpiece of irony. The full title is “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of the Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to Their Public.” Swift emphasizes the terrible poverty of eighteenth-century Ireland by ironically proposing that Irish parents earn money by selling their children as food.

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The phrase “a modest proposal” is often used ironically to introduce a major innovative suggestion.

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

He sees it as a modest proposal; a more ambitious effort would be to eliminate like-kind exchanges altogether.

From Los Angeles Times

As a comic device, a philosophical tactic and a social weapon, it has been around for a long time, going back at least back to Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” and including the 1729 “A Modest Proposal,” in which Jonathan Swift suggests that the Irish poor might improve their financial situation by selling their children to the rich for food.

From Los Angeles Times

Paying homage to Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” which proposed the poor should sell their children as food to the rich, writer and animal rights activist Jonathan Safran Foer posed a similar question in a satirical essay titled “Let Them Eat Dog” in 2009.

From Los Angeles Times

It's a simple question that sounds a little like a modest proposal.

From Science Daily

It was billed as a modest proposal that would help heal the traumas of history and unite the country.

From New York Times

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.