2022-04-20
28 分钟Coming up on Word Matters, things get Orwellian in the narrowest sense of the word.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amin Shea,
Peter Sokolowski and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
In 1946, George Orwell published his now famous essay, Politics and the English Language.
Ammon sincerely wishes he hadn't.
One of the questions I feel like when you work in dictionaries that you often get from people is that people also want to know what words are there that you hate or that one hates or would banish from the language and what words do you like.
I feel like most lexicographers I know are pretty studious in trying to avoid having favorites are certainly about having disfavorite words.
But what I do have a distaste for is writings about words.
My least favorite words are just peeves about language.
I have to say perhaps foremost among my personal peeves is a piece of writing that is beloved by many.
And I like to think this is not just my contrary in nature that makes it so.
despised by me.
It's that I think it's a bad piece of writing.
I am speaking, of course, of George Orwell's politics and the English language.
Have you two feelings on this?
I've only just read it recently.
It's one of those things that is referred to so frequently.
I'm embarrassed to say, I don't think I ever studied it in school.
And so I took some of it kind of secondhand for granted the way lots of intellectual movements,