Doublespeak

//ˈdəbəlˌspiːk// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any language deliberately constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often by employing euphemism or ambiguity. uncountable

    "The report was riddled with so much corporate doublespeak that it was impossible to interpret."

  2. 2
    any language that pretends to communicate but actually does not wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
balderdashballoon juicebellywashblahblatherskitebollocks

Example

More examples

"In the United States, "right to work" is doublespeak for union-busting measures."

Etymology

From double + -speak. Coined in the 1950s in the vein of George Orwell's Newspeak as used in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. The word doublespeak does not appear in the book, although newspeak, oldspeak, and doublethink do.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.