Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Here we are at "D" and our Word for the wise © today is George Orwell's brilliant diagnosis of the simultaneous accommodation of fact and myth.

doublethink Winston Smith has his seminal insight into the workings of Ingsoc as he clandestinely reads War is Peace, the third chapter of Emmanuel Goldstein's The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them... Doublethink lies at the heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty."

The abuse of language is at the centre of the dystopia Orwell created in Nineteen Eighty-Four (first published in 1949). In this age of "Political Correctness", his Newspeak is a warning to us all about what can happen when tyrants gain control of semantics, history and media. So far, this has happened only in places like the USSR and China, but we've been warned. Because Orwell is so special, here's one more example of his perception:

"The words Communist International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine... Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily."

Superb. Next week, "earl" and "extermination" are among the "E" candidates.