Link Centre Dictionary

newspeak

news·peak

UK/ˈn(j)uːspiːk/ US/ˈnuˌspik/ uncommon

noun

1.

deliberately ambiguous and contradictiory language use to mislead and manipulate the public

  • “the welfare state brought its own newspeak”

Origin

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.

Related words

Broader terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.