Edition is the definitive edition,' he said. 'We're
getting the language into its final shape -- the shape it's going to have
when nobody speaks anything else. When we've finished with it, people like
you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our
chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We're destroying
words -- scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We're cutting the
language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won't contain a single word
that will become obsolete before the year 2050.'
He bit hungrily into his bread and swallowed a couple of mouthfuls,
then continued speaking, with a sort of pedant's passion. His thin dark
face had become animated, his eyes had lost their mocking expression and
grown almost dreamy.
'It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great
wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns
that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also
the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is
simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in
itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what
need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well --
better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again,
if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a
whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all
the rest of t