initial "u" as the prefix "eu" ( "good") instead of "ou" ( "not"). It was used to denounce the government's Irish land policy: "It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or caco-topians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable."

Decades before the first documented use of the word "dystopia" was "cacotopia"/"kakotopia" (using , "bad, wicked") originally proposed in 1818 by Jeremy Bentham: