many
were euphemisms. Such words, for instance, as joycamp (forced-labour camp)
or Minipax (Ministry of Peace, i.e. Ministry of War) meant almost the exact
opposite of what they appeared to mean. Some words, on the other hand,
displayed a frank and contemptuous understanding of the real nature of
Oceanic society. An example was prolefeed, meaning the rubbishy
entertainment and spurious news which the Party handed out to the masses.
Other words, again, were ambivalent, having the connotation 'good' when
applied to the Party and 'bad' when applied to its enemies. But in addition
there were great numbers of words which at first sight appeared to be mere
abbreviations and which derived their ideological colour not from their
meaning, but from their structure.
So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or might have
political significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary. The
name of every organization, or body of people, or doctrine, or country, or
institution, or public building, was invariably cut down into the familiar
shape; that is, a single easily pronounced word with the smallest number of
syllables that would preserve the original derivation. In the Ministry of
Truth, for example, the Records Department, in which Winston Smith worked,
was called Recdep, the Fiction Department was called Ficdep, the
Teleprogrammes Department was called Teledep, and so on. This was not done
solely with the object of saving time. Even in the early decades of the
twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the
characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that
the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in
totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such
words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In