JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post [Part of the series on Naming Things.]
While looking for something else in the Oxford English Dictionary I looked up the instances of the works of "George Orwell" being used as illustrative/descriptive examples for a word and found 484 usages and 9 first-time-use references. That's a lot for a modern writer in the OED--Shakespeare on the other hand has 15,986 listings and 1,591 first uses, the orders of magnitude fully expected; coming to another massive wordsmith in Gibbon, we see the numbers skewed deeply down to 1,741 and 32. Anyway, Orwell/Blair shows well in comparison to The Rise and Fall, which to me is impressive. Here are his 9:
Doublethink: The mental capacity to accept as equally valid two entirely contrary opinions or beliefs.
- 1949 ‘G. Orwell’ Nineteen Eighty-four i. iii. 37. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.
Junky: Worthless, valueless, rubbishy.
- 1946 ‘G. Orwell’ Coll. Ess. (1968) IV. 92. "The kind of junky books..that accumulate in the bottoms of cupboards."
Marxize: To form or adapt in accordance with Marxist or Marxist–Leninist theories or ideology.
- 1940 ‘G. Orwell’"Inside Whale", 163. “By being Marxised literature has moved no nearer to the masses.”
Nancifully, adv. In an effeminate manner.
- 1936 ‘G. Orwell’ Keep Aspidistra Flying i. 19. A youth..with gilded hair, tripped
Newspeak, n. Originally: the artificial language used for official propaganda in the dystopia of Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Subsequently: any corrupt form of English; esp. ambiguous or euphemistic language as used in official pronouncements or political propaganda.
- 1949. Nineteen Eighty-four i. 51. “Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary.”
Oldspeak, n. In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-four: the name used for ordinary English, as opposed to the artificial version Newspeak. In extended use: normal English usage, as distinct from dated, technical, obfuscatory, or propagandist language.
- 1949 ‘G. Orwell’ Nineteen Eighty-four i. 54. You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak... Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak.
- 1949 ‘G. Orwell’ Nineteen Eighty-four i. 299. It was expected that Newspeak would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050
pani-wallah, n. In South Asia: a water-carrier.
- 1934. G. Orwell Burmese Days xxv. 368. Ba Pe is pani-wallah in the same house at sixteen rupees a month.
-speak, suffix, used, after Orwell's Newspeak and Oldspeak, as a substantival suffix (cf. speak n. 1) to denote a particular variety of language or characteristic mode of speaking.
- 1949. ‘G. Orwell’ Nineteen Eighty-four i. 51. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary.
Unperson. A person who, usually for a political misdemeanour, is deemed not to have existed and whose name is removed from all public records. Later also more generally: a person whose contributions or achievements are officially denied or disregarded; a person of no political or social importance.
- 1949 ‘G. Orwell’ Nineteen Eighty-four ii. 159. Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.
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