An Authoritarian Leader and Invader of Privacy

1. Big Brother

an authoritarian leader and invader of privacy

BIG
BROTHERIS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

2. vaporize

turn into gas

You were
abolished, annihilated:vaporizedwas the usual word.

3. solipsism

the philosophical theory that the self is all that exists

The wordyou are trying to think of issolipsism.

4. spanner

a hand tool that is used to hold or twist a nut or bolt

Presumably -- sincehe had sometimes seen her with oily hands and carrying aspanner she had somemechanical job on one of the novel-writing machines.

5. cubicle

small area set off by walls for special use

It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the Records Department, where Winston
worked, they were dragging the chairs out of thecubiclesand grouping them in the
centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes
Hate.

6. lavatory

a room or building equipped with one or more toilets

There was no evidence, only fleeting glimpses that
might mean anything or nothing: snatches of overheard conversation, faint scribbles
onlavatorywalls -- once, even, when two strangers met, a small movement of the
hand which had looked as though it might be a signal of recognition.

7. hierarchical

classified by various criteria into successive levels

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction --
indeed, in some sense was the destruction -- of ahierarchicalsociety.

8. saccharine

overly sweet

On to each was dumpedswiftly the regulation lunch -- a metal pannikin of pinkish-grey stew, a hunk ofbread, a cube of cheese, a mug of milkless Victory Coffee, and one saccharine
tablet.

9. truncheon

a short stout club used primarily by police officers

Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by
gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointedtruncheons.

10. pneumatic

relating to or using air or a similar gas

Then he unrolled and clipped together four small cylinders of paper
which had already flopped out of thepneumatictube on the right-hand side of his
desk.

11. proletarian

belonging to or characteristic of the working class

There was a whole chain
of separate departments dealing withproletarianliterature, music, drama, and
entertainment generally.

12. saboteur

someone who commits sabotage or deliberately causes wrecks

A day never passed
when spies andsaboteursacting under his directions were not unmasked by the
Thought Police.

13. orthodoxy

the quality of adhering to what is commonly accepted

It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who
were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur
spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

14. heretical

departing from accepted beliefs or standards

Perhaps Withers or someone close to him had been suspected
ofhereticaltendencies.

15. euphony

any pleasing and harmonious sounds

A word which
was difficult to utter, or was liable to be incorrectly heard, was held to be ipso facto a bad word:
occasionally therefore, for the sake ofeuphony, extra letters were inserted into a word or an
archaic formation was retained.

16. gyroscope

rotating mechanism in the form of a mounted spinning wheel

Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern
has always reasserted itself, just as agyroscopewill always return to equilibrium,
however far it is pushed one way or the other.

17. inviolate

free of violation

To know that it was there,inviolate, was
almost the same as being in it.

18. etymological

relating to the origins or development of words

Noetymologicalprinciple was followed here: insome cases it was the original noun that was chosen for retention, in other cases the verb.

19. hedonistic

devoted to pleasure

It is the exact opposite of the stupid
George Orwell (Eric Blair): 1984 Chapter 3 Page 188
188
hedonisticUtopias that the old reformers imagined.

20. denture

a medical appliance that artificially replaces missing teeth

They hadpulled out the remnants of his teeth and given him a new set of dentures.

21. unrepentant

not feeling or expressing remorse

Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed
them while they were stillunrepentant: in fact, it killed them because they were
unrepentant.

22. inextricably

in a manner incapable of being disentangled or untied

In his mind thesmell of it wasinextricablymixed up with fornication.

23. palimpsest

a manuscript on which more than one text has been written

All history was apalimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

24. niggle

worry unnecessarily or excessively

What was even worse thanhaving to focus his mind on a series ofnigglingjobs was the need to conceal hisagitation from the telescreen.

25. oligarchy

a political system governed by a few people

It had long been realized that the only secure basis foroligarchyis
collectivism.

26. cauterize

burn, or sear using a hot iron or electric current

Something was killed in
your breast: burnt out,cauterizedout.

27. drivel

talk nonsense

George Orwell (Eric Blair): 1984 Chapter 2 Page 99
She knew the wholedrivelingsong by heart, it seemed.

28. sinecure

an office that involves minimal duties

After confessing tothese things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given posts whichwere in factsinecuresbut which sounded important.

29. tacitly

by unexpressed agreement

Tacitlythe Party was even inclined to encourage prostitution, as
an outlet for instincts which could not be altogether suppressed.

30. persiflage

light teasing

When he spoke of murder, suicide, venerealdisease, amputated limbs, and altered faces, it was with a faint air of persiflage.

31. simian

relating to or resembling an ape

For hours at a time she would sit almost immobile on the bed, nursing his
young sister, a tiny, ailing, very silent child of two or three, with a face madesimian
by thinness.

32. anodyne

capable of relieving pain

It wastheir delight, their folly, theiranodyne, their intellectual stimulant.

33. shirk

avoid one's assigned duties

It was perhaps not more dangerous thanshirkingan evening at the Centre.

34. malleable

easily influenced; capable of being shaped or bent

Men are infinitelymalleable.

35. camaraderie

the quality of affording easy familiarity and sociability

The sky was a warmer blue than he had seen it that year, and suddenly the
long, noisy evening at the Centre, the boring, exhausting games, the lectures, the
creakingcamaraderieoiled by gin, had seemed intolerable.

36. fecundity

the state of being fertile; capable of producing offspring

Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by
thefecundityand industriousness of its inhabitants.

37. zealot

a fervent and even militant proponent of something

Some nosingzealotin the Ministry (a woman,
probably: someone like the little sandy- haired woman or the dark-haired girl from
the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the
lunch interval, why he had used an old-fashioned pen, what he had been writing --
and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter.

38. abject

cast down in spirit or hope

The great purges involving thousands of people, with publicof traitors and thought-criminals who madeabjectconfession of their crimesand were afterwards executed, were special show-pieces not occurring oftener thanonce in a couple of years.

39. titular

existing in name only

Oceania has no capital,and itstitularhead is a person whose whereabouts nobody knows.

40. truism

an obvious statement of fact

Truismsare true, hold on tothat!

41. impregnable

immune to attack; incapable of being tampered with

They were allimpregnable, as the Party intended that they should be.

42. pugnacious

tough and callous by virtue of experience

'I arst you civil enough, didn't I?' said the old man, straightening his shoulders
pugnaciously.

43. anemone

a marine polyp that resembles a flower

At the heart of it, magnified by the curved surface, there was
a strange, pink, convoluted object that recalled a rose or a sea anemone.

44. diminution

change toward something smaller or lower

And evena technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for
thediminutionof human liberty.

45. nebulous

lacking definite form or limits

It had happened that morning at the Ministry, if anything sonebulous could be said
to happen.

46. indefatigable

showing sustained enthusiasm with unflagging vitality

In the vast
laboratories of the Ministry of Peace, and in the experimental stations hidden in the
Brazilian forests, or in the Australian desert, or on lost islands of the Antarctic, the
teams of experts are indefatigably at work.