Dictionary, was a provisional one,
and contained many superfluous words and archaic formations which were due
to be suppressed later. It is with the final, perfected version, as
embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary, that we are concerned
here.
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression
for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but
to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when
Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a
heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of
Ingsoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is
dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and
often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could
properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the
possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly
by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words
and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far
as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. To give a single example.
The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such
statements as 'This dog is free from lice' or 'This field is free from
weeds'. It could not be used in its old sense of 'politically free' or
'intellectually free' since political and intellectual freedom no longer
existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite
apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words,