Word.ws English Dictionary

we have always been at war with Eastasia

we have always been at war with Eastasia phrase: used to highlight a situation in which circumstances have changed, yet this change has gone unacknowledged or is being denied.

Phrase

we have always been at war with Eastasia

  1. (humorous) Used to highlight a situation in which circumstances have changed, yet this change has gone unacknowledged or is being denied.
    • Now it truly is as if it never existed in this repository! And we've always been at war with Eastasia.2012, Jon Loeliger, Matthew McCullough, Version Control with Git: Powerful Tools and Techniques for Collaborative Software Development, page 344
    • The more conversational, many-to-many nature of the medium also acts as a counterweight to older-style broadcast politics, where rulers could more easily get away with assurances that, "We've always been at war with Eastasia".2016, George Megalogenis, Balancing Act: Australia Between Recession and Renewal

Forms of we have always been at war with Eastasia

alternative formwe have always been at war with East Asia
alternative formwe have always been at war with Eurasia
alternative formwe've always been at war with Eastasia
alternative formwe've always been at war with East Asia
alternative formwe've always been at war with Eurasia

Origin of we have always been at war with Eastasia

From the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell, in which the world is divided into the superpowers of Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania. Oceania is in a state of perpetual war with one of the other powers but its alliance keeps shifting, and the government never acknowledges that its current adversary is its former ally and vice versa.

Questions about we have always been at war with Eastasia

What does we have always been at war with Eastasia mean?
We have always been at war with Eastasia means used to highlight a situation in which circumstances have changed, yet this change has gone unacknowledged or is being denied.
What part of speech is we have always been at war with Eastasia?
We have always been at war with Eastasia is a phrase.

Words near we have always been at war with Eastasia in the dictionary

  1. we are where we are
  2. we aye
  3. we been knew
  4. we hardly knew ye
  5. we have always been at war with East Asia
  6. we have always been at war with Eastasia
  7. we have always been at war with Eurasia
  8. we haven't got all day
  9. we live in a society
  10. We Wai Kai
  11. we wuz kangz

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: we have always been at war with Eastasia (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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