doublespeak
/ˈdəbəlˌspiːk/
doublespeak noun: any language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often by employing euphemism or ambiguity.
Noun
doublespeak (uncountable)
- Any language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often by employing euphemism or ambiguity.
- The report was riddled with so much corporate doublespeak that it was impossible to interpret.
- The popular and convergent use of information seems to represent something beyond the mere cosmetics of doublespeak, of a "garbage collector" turned "sanitary engineer" or a "strike" turned "work stoppage."1976, Brent D. Ruben, “The Coming of the Information Age”, in Brent D. Ruben, editor, Information and Behavior, page 7
- Synonyms:
- double talk
Synonyms of doublespeak
Origin of doublespeak
From double + -speak. Coined in the 1950s in the vein of George Orwell's Newspeak as used in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. The word doublespeak does not appear in the book, although newspeak, oldspeak, and doublethink do.
Questions about doublespeak
- What does doublespeak mean?
- Doublespeak means any language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often by employing euphemism or ambiguity.
- What part of speech is doublespeak?
- Doublespeak is a noun.
- How do you pronounce doublespeak?
- Doublespeak is pronounced /ˈdəbəlˌspiːk/.
Words near doublespeak in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: doublespeak (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-doublespeak.wav.
Cite this entry: “doublespeak.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doublespeak. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.