In addition, any word – this again applied in principle to every word in the language – could be negatived by adding the affix un- , or could be strengthened by the affix plus- , or, for still greater emphasis, doubleplus- . Thus, for example, uncold meant ‘warm’, while pluscold and doublepluscold meant, respectively, ‘very cold’ and ‘superlatively cold’. It was also possible, as in present-day English, to modify the meanings of almost any word by prepositional affixes such as ante-, post-, up-, down- , etc. By such methods it was found possible to bring about an enormous diminution of vocabulary. Given, for instance, the word good , there was no need for such a word as bad , since the required meaning was equally well – indeed, better – expressed by ungood . All that was necessary, in any case where two words formed a natural pair of opposites, was to decide which of them to suppress. Dark , for example, could be replaced by unlight , or light by undark , according to preference.