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'How is the Dictionary getting on?' said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

'Slowly,' said Syme. 'I'm on the adjectives. It's fascinating.'

He had brightened u immediately at the mention of !ewsea". He ushed his anni"in aside, too"u his hun" of bread in one delicate hand and his cheese in the other, and leaned across the table so

as to be able to sea" without shouting.

'#he $leventh $dition is the definitive edition,' he said. 'We're getting the language into its final

shae %the shae it's going to have when nobody sea"s anything else. When we'vefinished with it, eole li"e you will have to learn it all over again. &ou thin", I dare say, that

our chief job is inventing new words. ut not a bit of it( We're destroying words)scores ofthem, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the language down to the bone. #he $leventh

$dition won't contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year *++.'

He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a coule of mouthfuls, then continued

sea"ing, with a sort of edant's assion. His thin dar" face had become animated, his eyes had

lost their moc"ing e-ression and grown almost dreamy.

'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. f course the great wastage is in the verbs andadjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only

the synonyms/ there are also the antonyms. 0fter all, what justification is there for a wordwhich is simly the oosite of some other word? 0 word contains its oosite in itself. #a"e

1good1, for instance. If you have a word li"e 1good1, what need is there for a word li"e

1bad1? 12ngood1 will do just as well)better, because it's an e-act oosite, which the other isnot. r again, if you want a stronger version of 1good1, what sense is there in having a

whole string of vague useless words li"e 1e-cellent1 and 1slendid1 and all the rest ofthem? 13lusgood1 covers the meaning, or 1doublelusgood1 if you want something stronger

still. f course we use those forms already. ut in the final version of !ewsea"

there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be coveredby only si- words%in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It

was ..'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought.

0 sort of vaid eagerness flitted across Winston's face at the mention of ig rother.

!evertheless Syme immediately detected a certain lac" of enthusiasm.

'&ou haven't a real areciation of !ewsea", Winston,' he said almost sadly. '$ven whenyou write it you're still thin"ing in ldsea". I've read some of those ieces that you write in

1#he #imes1 occasionally. #hey're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'drefer to stic" to ldsea", with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. &oudon't gras the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you "now that !ewsea" is the only

language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?'

Winston did "now that, of course. He smiled, symathetically he hoed, not trusting himself to

sea". Syme bit off another fragment of the dar")coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on4'Don't you see that the whole aim of !ewsea" is to narrow the range of thought? In the end

we shall ma"e thoughtcrime literally imossible, because there will be no words in whichto e-ress it. $very concet that can ever be needed, will be e-ressed by e-actly one word,

with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.

0lready, in the $leventh $dition, we're not far from that oint. ut the rocess will still becontinuing long after you and I are dead. $very year fewer and fewer words, and the range of

consciousness always a little smaller. $ven now, of course, there's no reason or e-cuse for

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committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a 5uestion of self)disciline, reality)control. ut in

the end there won't be any need even for that. #he 6evolution will be comlete when thelanguage is erfect. !ewsea" is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is !ewsea",' he added with a sort of mystical

satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year *++, at the very latest, not

a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we arehaving now?'

78ragmento9 rwell, :. ;=. @hater A. $n rwell, : . ;= 1984.