Nadsat
name ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Alternative letter-case form of Nadsat. alt-of
"[…] Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, narrated by its teenage punk of a protagonist in an argot called nadsat, which is composed (a psychologist in the book explains) of "odd bits of rhyming slang. A bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of its roots are Slav." […] Despite the dazzling tour de force Burgess brings off, l have not included A Clockwork Orange in my discussion for several reasons. First, nadsat is primarily a parody of the exclusiveness and ephemerality of teenage slang: […]"
- 2 The Russian-influenced argot used by the teenage protagonists in Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange (1962).
"[…] Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, narrated by its teenage punk of a protagonist in an argot called nadsat, which is composed (a psychologist in the book explains) of "odd bits of rhyming slang. A bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of its roots are Slav." […] Despite the dazzling tour de force Burgess brings off, l have not included A Clockwork Orange in my discussion for several reasons. First, nadsat is primarily a parody of the exclusiveness and ephemerality of teenage slang: […]"
Example
More examples"[…] Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, narrated by its teenage punk of a protagonist in an argot called nadsat, which is composed (a psychologist in the book explains) of "odd bits of rhyming slang. A bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of its roots are Slav." […] Despite the dazzling tour de force Burgess brings off, l have not included A Clockwork Orange in my discussion for several reasons. First, nadsat is primarily a parody of the exclusiveness and ephemerality of teenage slang: […]"
Etymology
Borrowed from Russian -надцать (-nadcatʹ, “-teen”). The word was coined by English author Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) in his 1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.