Commentary In “The Principles of Newspeak,” the appendix to “1984,” George Orwell reports that it was expected that Newspeak “would have finally superseded Oldspeak (or Standard English, as we should call it) by about the year 2050.” It’s 2021 now.  How are we doing? The purpose of Newspeak, remember, was to alter reality in order to bring it into conformity with a particular political ideology. It also, Orwell explains, made “all other modes of thought impossible.” How did it do this?  Partly by the invention of new words, but “chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.” Consider the word “free.” The word was  still present in the vocabulary of Newspeak, but  only in its privative sense, e.g., “This dog is free from lice” or “This field is free from weeds.” Expunged was “free” …