English Explanatory Dictionary

Newspeak

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. The fictional language devised to meet the needs of Ingsoc and designed to restrict the words, and thereby the thoughts, of the citizens of Oceania in the 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.
  2. A highly dynamic and reflective programming language descended from Smalltalk, supporting both object-oriented and functional programming.
noun
  1. Alternative letter-case form of newspeak.
noun
  1. Use of ambiguous, misleading, or euphemistic words in order to deceive the listener, especially by politicians and officials.

Pronunciation

/ˈn(j)uːspiːk/ en-au-newspeak.ogg

Word forms

Newspeak Newspeaks

Etymology

From new + speak, coined by George Orwell in 1949 in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The programming language was so named because of its “shrinkable” design, following Orwell's idea of a continually diminishing vocabulary in Newspeak.

Antonyms

oldspeak

Related words

political correctness spin

Derived words

fanspeak newspeak
This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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