doublethink
The holding of two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them as true or correct, without acknowledging the contradiction.
Noun
- The holding of two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them as true or correct, without acknowledging the contradiction.
- The stars can be near or distant, according as we need them. Do you suppose our mathematicians are unequal to that? Have you forgotten doublethink? - 1949 June 8, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 3,...
- Any effort by the United States to halt these creeping advances of Communist imperialism became, by the same mad process of double-think, the only kind of "intervention" there ever could be. - 1965 May 11, William S....
- Or does the hypocrisy and doublethink go beyond a loathing of the human body and an acceptance of violence to a very practical fear that such a club in a predominantly middle-class Caucasian neighborhood will drive down...
Origin
From double + think. Coined by George Orwell in 1949 as part of the Newspeak in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Forms
Derived
Verb
- To engage in doublethink.
- "So we both doublethought our way around the inevitable as long as we could because we both really want the same thing and we both have policy problems with our superiors.” “I'm not sure I follow you,” Lindblad said, in...
- ... but, as they believed they had other reasons for supporting the invasion – be they moral, monetary or something else entirely – they doublethunk (or doublethought) it and endorsed the 'evidence' despite its lack of...