draconian

adj

1. Very severe, cruel, or harsh.

   “The mayor announced draconian budget cuts today.”

   “The conflict in the countryside resulted in a far more draconian punishment. The Southern Cross flag flew over the camps of striking shearers, who in revenge for their victimisation burned grass, fences, buildings and even riverboats[…]”

   “Perhaps lessons had already been learned from the Draconian infrastructure cuts on the Waterloo-Exeter route.”

   “And that movement, while it was eventually crushed through the extensive use of the draconian lese majeste law, shattered the taboo, by calling openly, for the first time, for the powers and financing of the monarchy to be accountable.”

2. (obsolete)Of, relating to, characteristic of, or resembling a dragon.

   “The dragon came low to the earth. It defied every image of a draconian being Kulp had ever seen.”

   “A large sandwyrm (which isn't to be confused with a sandworm) popped its draconian head from the earth.”

3. Of or relating to Draco, the first legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece.

   “As to the details of the Draconian constitution, it is certainly surprising to find so many institutions and offices referred to, which had hitherto been only known to exist at a later date.”

   “Not a line of the Draconian laws has been preserved in their original form.”

   “Aristotle, Constit., 3, 6 (speaking of the pre-Draconian age): […]”

   “The board of fifty-one “jurors” mentioned in connection with the code seems, in Adcock’s opinion, to constitute a new Draconian court.”

   “This table was probably a Solonian preface or preamble to the Draconian laws: its provisions embody the changes that followed from Solon’s reforms.”

4. (alt-of)Alternative letter-case form of draconian.

   “This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy?”

   “Cow killing in Cashmere is punished as a worse crime than homicide! Travellers to Cashmere in those days — entering the valley by the Shupeyon route — will perhaps remember the skeleton of a man hanging in rusty chains from a prominent bough of the first large tree which met the eye on emerging from the Heerpore pass. That wretch was hanged for vaccicide…a terrible example of Maharajah Golaub Sing’s Draconian laws!”

   “[T]o enact a Draconian law that if anybody who does not know anything about the subject thinks when you are trying to get a bullock into a truck when he will not go you are acting cruelly he can inform the police, and you can be arrested there and then and hauled up before a Justice of the Peace.”

   “"They have effectively put a gun to our head and said if we don't accept their proposal they will impose a more Draconian contract."”

   “Perhaps lessons had already been learned from the Draconian infrastructure cuts on the Waterloo-Exeter route.”

noun

1. A creature resembling a dragon.

   “... Draconians are fast. They'll fly to meet us no doubt. I remember after a few moments that the human queen is here as well. I call out to her, “Human queen, you are rescued by the Draconians. Come forth and know that you are safe under[…]”

   “... Draconians keep for pets . Vithacan - Symbionts that attach themselves to other creatures and survive off their emotional energy . Soul suckers is a disrespectful term for their race . Zelerians Race of squid like creatures with few[…]”

   “... draconians lifted the webbed bodies of the kender's friends and bore them away . Other draconians followed behind , carrying the companions ' packs and their weapons . As the draconians marched along a path very near the hidden kender[…]”