Politics and the English Language
George Orwell
1946

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 andour language —so the argument runs— must inevitably share in the generalcollapse. 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 anatural 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 politicaland economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this orthat individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing theoriginal cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and soon 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 ourlanguage makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that theprocess is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad
habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willingto 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 politicalregeneration: 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 have1

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 especiallybad —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 sothat 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 thefounder 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 ofidioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basicput 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 notneurotic, 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 asmall 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 horrorat the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned toacts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned
wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, androuse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of2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 languorsof Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as “standard English.” When
the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o’clock, better far and infinitely lessludicrous 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 ofimagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning andcannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost
indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture ofvagueness 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 moreof phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. I list
below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which thework 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 without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors3which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because theysave people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples
are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, rideroughshod 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 orderof the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are usedwithout knowledge of their meaning (what is a “rift,” for instance?), andincompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writeris not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current havebeen twisted out of their original meaning withouth those who use themeven 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 theother 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 withextra 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 aleading 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 (byexamination 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 unformation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by suchphrases 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 ofsentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as4

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 color, 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 régime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo,
gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture andelegance. 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, andsociological 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. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena,
hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, maddog, 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 -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of thiskind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary andso 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. Words like romantic, plastic,values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art crit5

icism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not
point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do soby 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.” Thewords democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice haveeach of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with
one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there noagreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides.
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic weare praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claimthat it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using thatword if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind areoften used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses
them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think hemeans something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain wasa 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 moreor 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

6riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; buttime and chance happeneth to them all.
Here it is in modern English:
Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel theconclusion 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.
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 havenot 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 incompetitive activities.” This had to be so, because no modern writer of thekind I am discussing —no one capable of using phrases like “objective considerations of contemporary phenomena”— would ever tabulate his thoughts inthat precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is awayfrom concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The
first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words arethose 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 andchance”) 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 thesecond kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do notwant to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcropsof 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, weshould 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 order7

to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips ofwords which have already been set in order by someone else, and making theresults presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing isthat 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 thesephrases 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, forinstance, 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 inmind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many asentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes,
and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaningvague, 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 thatthe writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in otherwords 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 threewords. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, andin addition there is the slip —alien for akin— making further nonsense, andseveral 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 hewants 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 saying. A scrupulous writer,in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:
81. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. 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 foryou, to a certain extent— and at need they will perform the important serviceof partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this pointthat 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 color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects
to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, 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 kindof dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when thelight 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 towardturning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his
9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 issaying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced
state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to politicalconformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of theindefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian
purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, canindeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for mostpeople to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the politicalparties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, questionbegging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded fromthe air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machinegunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along theroads 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 ofthem. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending
Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off youropponents 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, wemust, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right topolitical opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional
periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have beencalled upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere ofconcrete 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 the10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 arepolitical issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, andschizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I
should expect to find —this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge toverify— 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 whoshould 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" towrite 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 anationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying thefoundations 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 hiswords, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automaticallyinto the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one’s mind by ready-madephrases (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 not11

true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not throughany evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Tworecent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, whichwere 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 unformation out of existence, 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 areminor points. The defense 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 ofobsolete 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 especiallyconcerned 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 written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every casepreferring 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 allneeded 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 todescribe the thing you have been visualizing 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 rushingin and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing yourmeaning. 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 bestcover 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,12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 areused 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 canthink 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 deepchange 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 kindof 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 recognize 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 fromthe 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 politicalparties, from Conservatives to Anarchists— is designed to make lies soundtruthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure13

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.

14