My Orwell, Right or Left

I SUSPECT THAT GEORGE ORWELL would not have wished his surname to become an eponym. My 1996 Chambers gives two definitions for the adjective “Orwellian”: “relating to or in the style of the English writer George Orwell (pseudonym of Eric Blair, 1903–50)” or “characteristic of the dehumanized authoritarian society depicted in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.” This second sense has become hackneyed: in the past month I have seen it applied to the president and his flip-flops, bureaucratese, the National Hockey League, the editorial page of the New York Times, social networking, the Republican Party, digital rights management technology, and the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Orwellian” is now a surefire signal of cant or sloppy thinking, a meaningless word like “moderate” or “fascist.”