Word.ws English Dictionary

1984-ish

/ˌnʌɪntiːneɪtiˈfɔːɹɪʃ/

1984-ish adjective: resembling or pertaining to a totalitarian society, especially one characterised by intensive surveillance of the population.

Adjective

1984-ish (comparative more 1984-ish, superlative most 1984-ish)

  1. (informal) Resembling or pertaining to a totalitarian society, especially one characterised by intensive surveillance of the population.
    • I have no idea what this 1984-ish-sounding organization actually does, though I suspect it has something to do with industrial processes.2000, G. R. Evans, Martyn Percy, Managing the Church?: Order and Organization in a Secular Age, page 128
    • The poems were then posted on a Library of Congress website, and high school principals were encouraged in the slightly 1984-ish task of reading them over their loud speakers each morning at the beginning of the school day.2007, Jerome Sala, What if someone were listening? Contemporary poetry and the problem of popularity, page 140

Synonyms of 1984-ish

Forms of 1984-ish

comparativemore 1984-ish
superlativemost 1984-ish
alternative form1984ish

Origin of 1984-ish

From 1984 + -ish, a reference to the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Piecewise doublet of 1984-esque.

Questions about 1984-ish

What does 1984-ish mean?
1984-ish means resembling or pertaining to a totalitarian society, especially one characterised by intensive surveillance of the population.
What part of speech is 1984-ish?
1984-ish is an adjective.
How do you pronounce 1984-ish?
1984-ish is pronounced /ˌnʌɪntiːneɪtiˈfɔːɹɪʃ/ (UK).

Words near 1984-ish in the dictionary

  1. 1980
  2. 1980's
  3. 1980s
  4. 1984
  5. 1984-esque
  6. 1984-ish
  7. 1984esque
  8. 1984ish
  9. 1986 Act tenancies
  10. 1986 Act tenancy
  11. 1990's

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 1984-ish (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “1984-ish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/1984-ish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.