George Orwell

Politics and the English Language

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in
a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything
about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must
inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of
language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom
cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a
natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic
causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an
effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in
an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels
himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is
rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and
inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it
easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern
English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and
which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these
habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward
political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the
exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope
that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer.
Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually
written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad — I could
have quoted far worse if I had chosen — but because they illustrate various of the mental
vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly
representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:
1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who
once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become,
out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the
founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.
Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)
2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of
idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic
put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.
Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)
3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (1 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they
are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps
in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would
alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural,
irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social
bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure
integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a
small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either
personality or fraternity?
Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)
4. All the ‘best people’ from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic
fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial
horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have
turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends
of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian
organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic
fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the
crisis.
Communist pamphlet
5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny
and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the
humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak
canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of
strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that
of Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream — as gentle as
any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be
traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of
Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as ‘standard English’. When the
Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less
ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish,
inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful
mewing maidens!
Letter in Tribune
Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two
qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of
precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says
something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.
This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of
modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain
topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of
turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for
the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the
sections of a prefabricated hen-house. I list below, with notes and examples, various of
the tricks by means of which the work of prose-construction is habitually dodged.
DYING METAPHORS. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual
image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e. g. iron
resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (2 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of wornout
metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save
people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes
on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder
with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters,
on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used
without knowledge of their meaning (what is a ‘rift’, for instance?), and incompatible
metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is
saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning
without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is
sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now
always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always
the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to
think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.
OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate
verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give
it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate
against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the
effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to,
serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of
being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made
up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve,
form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference
to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of
instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and
de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by
means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by
such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in
the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax
by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account,
a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration,
brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.
PRETENTIOUS DICTION. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun),
objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit,
exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an
air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic,
historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used
to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying
war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne,
chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign
words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis
mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture
and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i. e., e. g. and etc., there is no real need
for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad
writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always
haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and
unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated,
clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their
Anglo-Saxon numbers(1). The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman,
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (3 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.)
consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal
way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and,
where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind
(deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to
think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an
increase in slovenliness and vagueness.
MEANINGLESS WORDS. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and
literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely
lacking in meaning(2). Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental,
natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they
not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by
the reader. When one critic writes, ‘The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living
quality’, while another writes, ‘The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its
peculiar deadness’, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like
black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see
at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are
similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies
‘something not desirable’. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic,
justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one
another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but
the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when
we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind
of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that
word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a
consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private
definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements
like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The
Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to
deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly,
are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another
example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an
imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of
the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to
men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and
chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the
conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no
tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a
considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into
account.
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (4 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several
patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation.
The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but
in the middle the concrete illustrations — race, battle, bread — dissolve into the vague
phrases ‘success or failure in competitive activities’. This had to be so, because no modern
writer of the kind I am discussing — no one capable of using phrases like ‘objective
considerations of contemporary phenomena’ — would ever tabulate his thoughts in that
precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from
concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains
forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The
second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from
Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only
one phrase (‘time and chance’) that could be called vague. The second contains not a
single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened
version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of
sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind
of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the
worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of
human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than
to the one from Ecclesiastes.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words
for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer.
It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order
by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of
this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit —
to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you
use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also
don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally
so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry —
when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech — it is
natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we
should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent
will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors,
similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning
vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed
metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images
clash — as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the
melting pot — it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the
objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples
I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three
words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in
addition there is the slip — alien for akin — making further nonsense, and several
avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben
(2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while
disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the
dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is
simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the
whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he
wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a
sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this
manner usually have a general emotional meaning — they dislike one thing and want to
express solidarity with another — but they are not interested in the detail of what they are
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (5 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four
questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or
idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will
probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is
avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply
throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will
construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent
— and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your
meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between
politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it
will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private
opinions and not a ‘party line’. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a
lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles,
manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from
party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid,
homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform
mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained
tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious
feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling
which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's
spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And
this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some
distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of
his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for
himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over
again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the
responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at
any rate favourable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.
Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations,
the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by
arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the
professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of
euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are
bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle
machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no
more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of
frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or
sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable
elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up
mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor
defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your
opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say
something like this:
‘While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features
which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think,
agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an
unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors
which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (6 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.’
The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts
like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of
clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared
aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a
cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’.
All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred,
and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should
expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the
German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen
years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can
spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.
The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient.
Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no
good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a
continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this
essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I
am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with
conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he ‘felt impelled’ to write it. I open it at
random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: ‘[The Allies] have an opportunity not
only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in
such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of
laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe.’ You see, he ‘feels impelled’
to write — feels, presumably, that he has something new to say — and yet his words, like
cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar
dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations,
achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard
against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.
I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this
would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing
social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering
with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this
may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often
disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a
minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned,
which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown
metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves
in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence
(3), to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign
phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness
unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language
implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.
To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words
and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a ‘standard English’ which must never be
departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every
word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct
grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning
clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a ‘good prose
style’. On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (7 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word
to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover
one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not
the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to
them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to
describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the
exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more
inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it,
the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring
or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as
possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.
Afterward one can choose — not simply accept — the phrases that will best cover the
meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to
make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all
prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But
one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that
one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are
used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can
think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of
attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could
keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I
quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.
I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an
instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and
others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used
this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what
Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities
as this, but one ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the
decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting
at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of
orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid
remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with
variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is
designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance
of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least
change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough,
send some worn-out and useless phrase — some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting
pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse — into the dustbin where
it belongs.
1946
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (8 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
_____
1) An interesting illustration of this is the way in which the English
flower names which were in use till very recently are being ousted by
Greek ones, snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not
becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this
change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning-awayfrom
the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is
scientific. [back]
2) Example: ‘Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely
Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic
compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric
accumulative ginting at a cruel, an inexorably selene timelessness...
Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bull's-eyes with precision.
Only they are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs
more than the surface bitter-sweet of resignation’. (Poetry Quarterly.)
[back]
3) One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this
sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a
not ungreen field.
THE END
____BD____
George Orwell: ‘Politics and the English Language’
First published: Horizon. — GB, London. — April 1946.
Reprinted:
— ‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’. — 1950.
— ‘The Orwell Reader, Fiction, Essays, and Reportage’ — 1956.
— ‘Collected Essays’. — 1961.
— ‘Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays’. — 1965.
— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.
____
Machine-readable version: O. Dag
Last modified on: 2004-07-24
George Orwell
‘Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays’
© 1950 Secker and Warburg. London.
‘Politics and the English Language’:
[Index page]
Library [Eng] [Rus] > Essays [Eng] [Rus] ~ [CSS off]
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (9 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language
[orwell.ru] [Home] [Biography] [Library] [A Life] [Info & (c)] [Links] [Site map] [Search] [Feedback]
© 1999-2004 O. Dag – ¡C. date: 1999-11-04 & L. mod.: 2004-07-24!
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit (10 of 10) [9/16/2008 2:17:00 PM]