Orwell attends jail-diversion meeting, and smiles

On our way to posting today's stories, we ran into some meaning-involved rhetoric that prompted us to have a mindful-moment to help untrigger our coherency-impacted sensibilities. So we retreated, as always, to Orwell's "1984," below.

{In this excerpt from Part 1, Chapter 5, Ministry of Truth member O'Brien speaks to protagonist Winston.}

"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms.

"After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well—better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not.

"Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still ... In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words—in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?"

More on 1984 and language here.

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity

Related:

• Merc covers RM4 story about biased ballot language with--get this--biased language of its own

• DEI statements analysis: University of California colleges overrun with “intellectual authoritarianism”

• If local Woke colleges are 1984, I was Julia: A young conservative's perspective

Sign up to receive updates on Opp Now articles

Email Address:

First Name:

Last Name:

Opp Now enthusiastically welcomes smart, thoughtful, fair-minded, well-written comments from our readers. But be advised: we have zero interest in posting rants, ad hominems, poorly-argued screeds, transparently partisan yack, or the hateful name-calling often seen on other local websites. So if you've got a great idea that will add to the conversation, please send it in. If you're trolling or shilling for a candidate or initiative, forget it.