such as good, strong, big, black, soft, were
retained, but their total number was very small. There was little need for
them, since almost any adjectival meaning could be arrived at by adding -
ful to a noun-verb. None of the now-existing adverbs was retained, except
for a very few already ending in -wise: the -wise termination was
invariable. The word well, for example, was replaced by goodwise.
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 meaning 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.
The second distinguishing mark of Newspeak grammar was its regularity.
Subject to a few exceptions which are mentioned below all inflexions
followed the same rules. Thus, in all verbs the preterite and the past
participle were the same and ended in -ed. The preterite of steal was
stealed, the preterite of think was thinked, an