newspeak

American  

[noo-speek, nyoo-] / ˈnuˌspik, ˈnju- /

noun

1. (sometimes initial capital letter) an official or semiofficial style of writing or saying one thing in the guise of its opposite, especially in order to serve a political or ideological cause while pretending to be objective, as in referring to “increased taxation” as “revenue enhancement.”

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newspeak British  

/ ˈnjuːˌspiːk /

noun

1. the language of bureaucrats and politicians, regarded as deliberately ambiguous and misleading

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Etymology

Origin of newspeak

new + speak, coined by George Orwell in his novel 1984 (1949)

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

newspeak

Stories of censorious undergraduates and ridiculous newspeak in the U.S. found grateful consumers in French, German, and U.K. media.

From Slate ● Jan. 5, 2025

“Food processor” sounds like newspeak concocted by a sinister culinary regime to reassure the international community.

From Washington Post ● Feb. 8, 2022

It gripped him long before he came up with Big Brother, Oceania, newspeak or the telescreen, and it’s more important than any of them.

From The Guardian ● May 19, 2019

From Orwell’s evocation of the totalitarian superstate of Oceania, new words entered the language: doublethink, thoughtcrime, newspeak and Big Brother.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 3, 2019

A topsy-turvy continent adrift among the gales of newspeak, under the gaze of a million grey bureaucrats passing for big brothers.

From After the Rain : how the West lost the East by Samuel Vaknin

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Related Words

• argot
• idiom
• lingo
• parlance
• patois
• slang
• vernacular
• vocabulary

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