Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Orwell had a job with the British Ministry of Information during WWII. Part of his job was translating news reports into 850-word Basic English [1] for radio broadcasts to the Colonies. (India, mostly.) Once you know that, this essay, and "1984", make more sense. Orwell discovered that translating into Basic English is a political act. The evasions and prevarications of official statements do not translate. Ambiguity has to be hammered out first to fit into the forced plain style of Basic English. Hence, Newspeak.

His list of overused phrases is dated. A few to avoid today:

- "very unique". "Unique" means there's only one. If there's more than one, "unique" is the wrong word.

- "a lot". Overused, but harmless.

- "literally". Avoid unless "literally" is true; do not use for emphasis.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Basic_English_word_l...

> "very unique". "Unique" means there's only one. If there's more than one, "unique" is the wrong word.

"There's only one of it" is equivalent to "it's different from everything else". There's no problem with "it's very different from everything else".

I tnink OP was looking at it like "x is a member of a set which has only one member", so in the sense that, you can't be a little pregnant, only completely.

As a slight counter argument, could we not argue someone carrying triplets is more pregnant than someone pregnant with a single child?

It has been pointed out to me that literally has been used for emphasis since at least around the time Shakespeare was thrashing it out with a quill.

The two dictionaries I have at hand both list some variation of in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually as one definition of literally.

Ah yes... but that is not what literally literally means.

English literally has no word for literally?

From my favorite etymology website, the etymology of the word literally:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=literally

Reply on news.ycombinator.com