If they keep censoring long enough the meanings will be inverse...or worse no antonym or synonym.
To eliminate nuance gives the ruler the power of the word to make the rules on what can and can not be said; imprecision is precisely how the totalitarian uses words to name the enemy
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime* literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten…”
If they keep censoring long enough the meanings will be inverse...or worse no antonym or synonym.
To eliminate nuance gives the ruler the power of the word to make the rules on what can and can not be said; imprecision is precisely how the totalitarian uses words to name the enemy
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime* literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten…”
- Syme talking to Winston. 1984, George Orwell
So things are pretty much Double Plus Ungood.
Exactly
For example *gender*.
A long time ago it referred to the tense of a noun: actor / actress, steward / stewardess ... uzw.
Bingo