George Orwell
New Words
At
present the formation of new words is a slow process (I have read somewhere
that English gains about six and losses about four words a year) and no new
words are deliberately coined except as names for material objects. Abstract
words are never coined at all, though old words (e. g. ‘condition’. ‘reflex’,
etc.) are sometimes twisted into new meanings for scientific purposes. What I
am going to suggest here is that it would be quite feasible to invent a
vocabulary, perhaps amounting to several thousands of words, which would deal
with parts of our experience now practically unmeanable to language. There are
several objections to the idea, and I will deal with these as they arise. The
first step is to indicate the kind of purpose for which new words are needed.
Everyone
who thinks at all has noticed that our language is practically useless for
describing anything that goes on inside the brain. This is so generally
recognized that writers of high skill (e. g. Trollope and Mark Twain) will
start their autobiographies by saying that they do not intend to describe their
inner life, because it is of its nature indescribable. So soon as we are
dealing with anything that is not concrete or visible (and even there to a
great extent — look at the difficulty of describing anyone's appearance) we
find that words are no like to the reality than chessmen to living beings. To
take an obvious case which will not raise side-issues, consider a dream. How do
you describe a dream? Clearly you never describe it, because no words that
convey the atmosphere of dreams exist in out language. Of course, you can give
a crude approximation of some of the facts in a dream. You can say ‘I dreamed
that I was walking down Regent Street with a porcupine wearing a bowler hat’
etc., but this is no real description of the dream. And even if a psychologist
interprets your dream in terms of ‘symbols’, he is still going largely by
guesswork; for the real quality of the dream, the quality that gave the
porcupine its sole significance, is outside the world of words. In fact,
describing a dream is like translating a poem into the language of one of
Bohn's cribs; it is a paraphrase which is meaningless unless one knows the
original.
I
chose dreams as in instance that would not be disputed, but if were only dreams
that were indescribable, the matter might not be worth bothering about. But, as
has been pointed out over and over again, the waking mind is not so different
from the dreaming mind as it appears — or as we like to pretend that it
appears. It is true that most of our waking thoughts are reasonable’ — that is,
there exists in our minds a kind of chessboard upon which thoughts move
logically and verbally; we use this part of our minds for any straightforward
intellectual problem, and we get into the habit of thinking (i.e. thinking in
our chessboard moments) that it is the whole of the mind. But obviously it is
not the whole. The disordered, un-verbal world belonging to dreams I never
quite absent from our minds, and if any calculation were possible I dare say it
would be found that quite half the volume of our waking thoughts were of this
order. Certainly the dream-thoughts take a hand even when we are trying to
think verbally, they influence the verbal thoughts, and it is largely they that
make our inner life valuable. Examine your thought at any casual moment. The
main movement in it will be a stream of nameless things — so nameless that one
hardly knows whether to call them thoughts, images or feelings. In the first
place there are the objects you see and the sounds you hear, which are in
themselves describable in words, but which as soon as they enter your mind
become something quite different and totally indescribable(1). And besides this
there is the dream-life which your mind unceasingly creates for itself — and
though most of this is trivial and soon forgotten, it contains things which are
beautiful, funny, etc. beyond anything that ever gets into word. In a way this
un-verbal part of your mind is even the most important part for it is the
source of nearly all motives. All likes and dislikes, all aesthetic feeling,
all notions of right and wrong (aesthetic and moral considerations are in any
case inextricable) spring from feelings which are generally admitted to be subtler
than words. When you are asked ‘Why do you do, or not do, so and so?’ you are
invariably ware that your real reason will not go into words, even when you
have no wish to conceal it; consequently you rationalize your conduct, more or
less dishonestly. I don't know whether everyone would admit this, and it is a
fact that some people seem unaware of being influenced by their inner life, or
even of having any inner. I notice that many people never laugh when they are
alone and I suppose that if a man doesn't laugh when he is alone his inner life
must be relatively barren. Still, every at all individual man has an inner
life, and is aware of the practical impossibility of understanding others or
being understood — in general, of the star-like isolation in which human beings
live. Nearly all literature is an attempt to escape from this isolation by
round — about means the direct means (words in their primary meanings) being
almost useless.
‘Imaginative’
writing is as it were a flank-attack upon positions that are impregnable from
the front. A writer attempting anything that is not coldly ‘intellectual’ can
do very little with words in their primary meanings. He gets his effect, if at
all, by using words in a tricky roundabout way, relying on their cadences and so
forth, as in speech he would rely upon tone and gesture. In the case of poetry
this is too well known to be worth arguing about. No one with the smallest
understanding of poetry supposed that
The
mortal moon bath her eclipse endured,
And
the sad augurs mock their own presage
really
means what the words ‘mean’ in their dictionary-sense. (The couplet is said to
refer to Queen Elizabeth having got over her grand climacteric safely.) The
dictionary-meaning has, as nearly always, something to do with the real
meaning, but not more than the ‘anecdote’ of a picture has to do with its
design. And it is the same with prose, mutatis mutandis. Consider a novel, even
a novel which has ostensibly nothing to do with the inner life — what is called
a ‘straight story’. Consider Manon Lescaut. Why does the author invent this long
rigmarole about an unfaithful girl and a runaway abbé? Because he has a certain
feeling, vision, whatever you like to call it, and knows, possibly after
experiment, that it is no use trying to convey this vision by describing it as
one would describe a crayfish for a book of zoology. But by not describing it,
by inventing something else (in this case a picaresque novel: in another age he
would choose another form) he can convey it, or part of it. The art of writing
is in fact largely the perversion of words, and I would even say that the less
obvious this perversion is, the more thoroughly it has been done. For a writer
who seems to twist words out of their meanings (e. g. Gerard Manley Hopkins) is
really, if one looks closely, making a desperate attempt to use them
straightforwardly. Whereas a writer who seems to have no tricks whatever, for
instance the old ballad writers, is making an especially subtle flank-attack,
though, in the case of the ballad writers, this is no doubt unconscious. Of
course one hears a lot of cant to the effect that all good art is ‘objective’
and every true artist keeps his inner life to himself. But the people who say
this do not mean it. All they mean is that they want the inner life to be
expressed by an exceptionally roundabout method, as in the ballad or the
‘straight story’.
The
weakness of the roundabout method, apart from its difficulty, is that it
usually fails. For anyone who is not a considerable artist (possibly for them
too) the lumpishness of words results in constant falsification. Is there
anyone who has ever written so much as a love letter in which he felt that he
had said exactly what he intended? A writer falsifiers himself both
intentionally and unintentionally. Intentionally, because the accidental
qualities of words constantly tempt and frighten him away from his true
meaning. He gets an idea, begins trying to express it, and then in the
frightful mess of words that generally results, a pattern begins to form itself
more or less accidentally. It is not by any means the pattern he wants, but it
is at any rate not vulgar or disagreeable; it is ‘good art’. He takes it,
because ‘good art’ is a more or less mysterious gift from heaven, and it seems
a pity to waste it when it presents itself. Is not anyone with any degree of
mental honesty conscious of telling lies all day long, both in talking and
writing, simply because lies will fall into artistic shape when truth will not?
Yet if word represented meaning as fully and accurately as height multiplied by
base represents the area of a parallelogram, at least the necessity for lying
would never exist. And in the mind of reader or hearer there are further
falsifications, because, words not being a direct channel of thought, he
constantly sees meanings which are not there. A good illustration of this is
our supposed appreciation of foreign poetry. We know from the Vie Amoureuse du
Docteur Watson stuff of foreign critics, that true understanding of foreign
literature is almost impossible; yet quite ignorant people profess to get, do
get, vast pleasure out of poetry in foreign and even dead languages. Clearly
the pleasure they derive may come from something the writer never intended,
possibly from something that would make him squirm in his grave if he knew it
was attributed to him. I say to myself Vixi puellis nuper idoneus, and I repeat
this over and over for five minutes for the beauty of the word idoneus. Yet,
considering the gulf of time and culture, and my ignorance of Latin, and the
fact that no one even knows how Latin was pronounced, is it possible that the
effect I am enjoying is the effect Horace was trying for? It is as though I
were in ecstasies over the beauty of a picture, and all because of some splashes
of paint which had accidentally got on to the canvas two hundred years after it
was painted. Notice, I am not saying that art would necessarily improve if
words conveyed meaning more reliably. For all I know art thrives on the
crudeness and vagueness of language. I am only criticizing words in their
supposed function as vehicles of thought. And it seems to me that from the
point of view of exactitude and expressiveness our language has remained in the
Stone Age.
The
solution I suggest is to invent new words as deliberately as we would invent
new parts for a motor-car engine. Suppose that a vocabulary existed which would
accurately express the life of the mind, or a great part of it. Suppose that
there need be no stultifying feeling that life is inexpressible, no
jiggery-pokery with artistic tricks; expressing one's meaning simply (being) a
matter of taking the right words and putting them in place, like working out an
equation in algebra. I think the advantages of this would be obvious. It is
less obvious, though, than to sit down and deliberately coin words in a
common-sense proceeding. Before indicating a way in which satisfactory words
might be coined, I had better deal with the objections which are bound to
arise.
If
you say to any thinking person ‘Let us form a society for the invention of new
and subtler words’, he will first of all object that it is the idea of a crank,
and then probably say that our present words, properly handled, will meet all
difficulties. (This last, of course, is only a theoretical objection. In
practice everyone recognizes the inadequacy of language — consider such
expressions as ‘Words fail’, ‘It wasn't what he said, it was the way he said
it’, etc.) but finally he will give you an answer something like this: ‘Things
cannot be done in that pedantic way. Languages can only grow slowly, like
flowers; you can't patch them up like pieces of machinery. Any made-up language
must be characterless and lifeless — look at Esperanto, etc. The whole meaning
of a word is in its slowly-acquired associations’, etc.
In
the first place, this argument, like most of the arguments produced when one
suggests changing anything, is a long-winded away of saying that what is must
be. Hitherto we have never set ourselves to the deliberate creation of words,
and all living languages have grown slowly and haphazard; therefore language
cannot grow otherwise. At present, when we want to say anything above the level
of a geometrical definition, we are obliged to do conjuring trick with sounds,
associations, etc.; therefore this necessity is inherent in the nature of
words. The non sequitur is obvious. And notice that when I suggest abstract
words I am only suggesting an extension of our present practice. For we do now
coin concrete words. Airplanes and bicycles are invented, and we invent names
for them, which is the natural thing to do. It is only a step to coining names
for the now unnamed things that exist in the mind. You say to me ‘Why do you
dislike Mr Smith?’ and I say ‘Because he is a liar, coward, etc.’, and I am
almost certainly giving the wrong reason. In my own mind the answer runs
‘Because he is a — kind of man’, — standing for something which I understand,
and you would understand if I could tell it you. Why not find a name for ——?
The only difficulty is to agree about what we are naming. But long before this
difficulty raised, the reading, thinking type of man will have recoiled from
such as ideas as the invention of words. He will produce argument like the one
I indicated above, or others of a more or less sneering, question-begging kind.
In reality all these arguments are humbug. The recoil comes from a deep
unreasoned instinct, superstitious in origin. It is the feeling that any direct
rational approach to one's difficulties, any attempt to solve the problems of
life as one would solve an equation, can lead nowhere — more, is definitely
unsafe. One can see this idea expressed everywhere in a roundabout way. All the
bosh that is talked about our national genius for ‘muddling through’, and all
the squashy godless mysticism that is urged against any hardness and soundness
of intellect, mean au fond that it is safer not to think. This feeling starts,
I am certain, in the common belief of children that the air is full of avenging
demons waiting to punish presumption(2). In adults the belief survives as a
fear of too rational thinking. I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, pride comes
before a fall, etc. — and the most dangerous pride is the false pride of the
intellect. David was punished because he numbered the people — i.e. because he
used his intellect scientifically. Thus such an idea as, for instance,
ectogenesis, apart from its possible effects upon the health of the race,
family life, etc., is felt to be in itself blasphemous. Similarly any attack on
such a fundamental thing as language, an attack as it were on the very
structure of our own minds, is blasphemy and therefore dangerous. To reform
language is practically an interference with the work of God — though I don't
say that anyone would put it quite in these words. This objection is important,
because it would prevent most people from even considering such an idea as the
reform of language. And of course the idea is useless unless undertaken by
large numbers. For one man, or a clique, to try and make up a language, as I
believe James Joyce is now doing, is as absurd as one man trying to play
football alone. What is wanted is several thousands of gifted but normal people
who would give themselves to word-invention as seriously as people now give themselves
to Shakespearean research. Given these, I believe we could work wonders with
language.
Now
as to the means. One sees an instance of the successful invention of words,
though crude and on small scale, among the members of large families. All large
families have two or three words peculiar to themselves — words which they have
made up and which convey subtilized, non-dictionary meanings. They say ‘Mr
Smith is a — kind of man’. Using some home-made word, and the others understand
perfectly; here then, within the limits of the family, exists an adjective
filling one of the many gaps left by the dictionary. What makes it possible for
the family to invent these words is the basis of their common experience.
Without common experience, of course, no word can mean anything. If you say to
me ‘What does bergamot smell like?’ I say ‘Something like verbena’. And so long
as you know the smell of verbena you are somewhere near understanding me. The
method of inventing words, therefore, is the method of analogy based on
unmistakable common knowledge; one must have standards that can be referred to
without any chance of misunderstanding, as one can refer to a physical thing
like the smell of verbena. In effect it must come down to giving words a
physical (probably visible) existence. Merely talking about definitions is
futile; one can see this whenever it is attempted to define one of the words
used by literary critics (e. g. ‘sentimental’(3) ‘vulgar’, ‘morbid’, etc.). All
meaningless — or rather, having a different meaning for everyone who uses them.
What is needed is to show a meaning in some unmistakable form, and then, when
various people have identified it in their own minds and recognized it as worth
naming, to give it a name. The question is simply of finding a way in which one
can give thought an objective existence.
The
thing that suggests itself immediately is the cinematograph. Everyone must have
noticed the extraordinary powers that are latent in the film — the powers of
distortion, of fantasy, in general of escaping the restrictions of the physical
world. I suppose it is only from commercial necessity that the film has been
used chiefly for silly imitations of stage plays, instead of concentrating as
it ought on things that are beyond the stage. Properly used, the film is the
one possible medium for conveying mental processes. A dream, for instance, as I
said above, is totally indescribable in words, but it can quite well be
represented on the screen. Years ago I saw a film of Douglas Fairbanks’, part
of which was a representation of a dream. Most of it, of course, was silly
joking about the dream where you have no clothes on in public, but for a few
minutes it really was like a dream, in a manner that would have been impossible
in words, or even in a picture, or, I imagine, in music. I have seen the same
kind of thing by flashes in other films. For instance in Dr Caligari — a film,
however, which was for the most part merely silly, the fantastic element being
exploited for its own sake and not to convey any definite meaning. If one
thinks of it there is very little in the mind that could not somehow be
represented by the strange distorting powers of the film. A millionaire with a
private cinematograph, all the necessary props and a troupe of intelligent actors
could, if he wished, make practically all of his inner life known. He could
explain the real reasons of his actions instead of telling rationalized lies,
point out the things an ordinary man has to keep locked up because there are no
words to express them. In general, he could make other people understand him.
Of course, it is not desirable that any one man, short of a genius, should make
a show of his inner life. What is wanted is to discover the now nameless
feelings that men have in common. All the powerful motives which will not go
into words and which are a cause of constant lying and misunderstanding, could
be tracked down, given visible form, agreed upon, and named. I am sure that the
film, with its almost limitless powers of representation, could accomplish this
in the hands of the right investigators, though putting thoughts into visible
shape would not always be easy — in fact, at first it might be as difficult as
any other art.
A
note on the actual form new words ought to take. Suppose that several thousands
of people with the necessary time, talents and money undertook to make
additions to language; suppose that they managed to agree upon a number of new
and necessary words; they would still have to guard against producing a mere
Volapuk which would drop out of use as soon as it was invented. It seems to me
probable that a word, even a not yet existing word, has as it were a natural
form — or rather, various natural forms in various languages. If languages were
truly expressive there would be no need to play upon the sounds of words as we
do now, but I suppose there must always be some correlation between the sound
of a word and its meaning. An accepted (I believe) and plausible theory of the
origin of language is this. Primitive man, before he had words, would naturally
rely upon gesture, and like any other animal he would cry out at the moment of
gesticulating, in order to attract attention. Now one instinctively makes the
gesture that is appropriate to one's meaning, and all parts of the body follow
suit including the tongue. Hence, certain tongue-movements — i.e. certain
sounds — would come to be associated with certain meanings. In poetry one can
point to words which, apart from their direct meanings, regularly convey
certain ideas by their sound. Thus: ‘Deeper than did ever plummet sound’
(Shakespeare — more than once I think). ‘Past the plunge of plummet’ (A. E.
Housman). ‘the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea’ (Matthew Arnold), etc. Clearly,
apart from direct meanings, the sound plum- or plun- has something to do with
bottomless oceans. Therefore in forming new words one would have to pay
attention to appropriateness of sound as well as exactitude of meaning. It
would not do, as at present, to clip a new word of any real novelty by making
it out of old ones, but it also would not do to make it out of a mere arbitrary
collection of letters. One would have to determine the natural form of the
word. Like agreeing upon the actual meanings of the words, this would need the
cooperation of a large number of people.
I
have written all this down hastily, and when I read through it I see that there
are weak patches in my argument and much of it is commonplace. To most people
in any case the whole idea of reforming language would seem either dilettantish
or crankish. Yet it is worth considering what utter incomprehension exists
between human beings — at least between those who are not deeply intimate. At
present, as Samuel Butler said, the best art (i.e. the most perfect
thought-transference) must be ‘lived’ from one person to another. It need not
be so if our language were more adequate. It is curious that when our
knowledge, the complication of our lives and therefore (I think it must follow)
our minds, develop so fast, language, the chief means of communication, should
scarcely stir. For this reason I think that the idea of the deliberate
invention of words is at least worth thinking over.
1940
_____
1)
‘The mind, that ocean where each kind Doth straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds and other seas,’ etc.
[back]
2)
The idea is that the demons will come down on you for being too self-confident.
Thus children believe that if you hook a fish and say ‘Got him’ before he is
landed, he will escape; that if you put your pads on before it is your turn to
bat you will be out first ball, etc. Such beliefs often survive in adults.
Adults are only less superstitious than children in proportion as they have
more power over their environment. In predicaments where everyone is powerless
(e. g. war, gambling) everyone is superstitious. [back]
3)
I once began making a list of writers whom the critics called ‘sentimental’. In
the end it included nearly every English writer. The word is in fact a
meaningless symbol of hatred, like the bronze tripods in Homer which were given
to guest as a symbol of friendship. [back]
THE
END
____BD____
George
Orwell: ‘New Words’
First
published: --. — . — 1940.
Reprinted:
—
‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.
George
Orwell
‘The
‘CEJL’’
©
1968 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich