the B vocabulary (also called compound words), and the C
vocabulary. It will be simpler to discuss each class separately, but the
grammatical peculiarities of the language can be dealt with in the
section devoted to the A vocabulary, since the same rules held good for
all three categories.



The A vocabulary. The A vocabulary consisted of the words needed for the
business of everyday life -- for such things as eating, drinking,
working, putting on one?s clothes, going up and down stairs, riding in
vehicles, gardening, cooking, and the like. It was composed almost
entirely of words that we already possess words like hit, run, dog,
tree, sugar, house, field -- but in comparison with the present-day
English vocabulary their number was extremely small, while their
meanings were far more rigidly defined. All ambiguities and shades of
meaning had been purged out of them. So far as it could be achieved, a
Newspeak word of this class was simply a staccato sound expressing one
clearly understood concept. It would have been quite impossible t