Language that is deliberately confusing or misleading, often using opposite meanings or complex words to hide the truth or make something bad sound good.
From 'double' plus 'speak,' popularized by George Orwell's 1949 novel 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' where the totalitarian government used contradictory language to control thought. The term entered common usage in the 1970s.
Orwell invented this concept to show how powerful language can be—if a government can make 'war' mean 'peace' and 'lies' mean 'truth,' they control not just what people do, but how they think about reality itself.
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