doublethink
doublethink noun: the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them as true or correct; an instance of doing so.
Noun
doublethink (usually uncountable, plural doublethinks)
- The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them as true or correct; an instance of doing so.
- The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink?1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 3, in Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC; republished [Australia]: Project Gutenberg of Australia...
- Any effort by the United States to halt these creeping advances of Communist imperialism became, by the same mad process of double-think, the only kind of "intervention" there ever could be.1965 May 11, William S. White, “Doctrine of Nonintervention Comes Cropper In Dominica”, in The Morning Record, Meriden-Wallingford, Connecticut, page 4
Verb
doublethink (third-person singular simple present doublethinks, present participle doublethinking, simple past and past participle doublethought)
- To engage in doublethink.
- "So we both doublethought our way around the inevitable as long as we could because we both really want the same thing and we both have policy problems with our superiors.” “I'm not sure I follow you,” Lindblad said, in a tone of voice[…]2011 September 29, Norman Spinrad, A World Between, Gateway, →ISBN
- ... but, as they believed they had other reasons for supporting the invasion – be they moral, monetary or something else entirely – they doublethunk (or doublethought) it and endorsed the 'evidence' despite its lack of merit.2014 November 6, M. Dentith, The Philosophy of Conspiracy Theories, Springer, →ISBN
Forms of doublethink
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | doublethinks |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | doublethinks |
| present participle | doublethinking |
| past participle | doublethought |
| past | doublethought |
Origin of doublethink
From double + think. Coined by George Orwell in 1949 as part of the Newspeak in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Words formed from doublethink
Questions about doublethink
- What does doublethink mean?
- Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them as true or correct; an instance of doing so.
- What part of speech is doublethink?
- Doublethink can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of doublethink?
- The plural of doublethink is doublethinks.
Words near doublethink in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: doublethink (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: “doublethink.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doublethink. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.