The Power of Words

          "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.  Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else.  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?" [...]  Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?  In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.  Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed in exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. [...]  Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. [...]  Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we're having now?" –– Syme (George Orwell)