1984 Vocabulary Worksheets
One: VII, VIII
Read the sentence and write what you think the underlined word means. You may use a
dictionary or thesaurus. THEN, write a sentence of your own using the vocabulary word.
1. Before the Revolution they had been hideously oppressed by the capitalists, they had
been starved and flogged…..
2. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, ….but no attempt was
made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was no desirable that the
proles should have strong political feelings.
3. They had confessed to intelligence with the enemy….intrigues against the leadership
of Big Brother which had started long before the Revolution happened and acts of
sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
4. After confessing to these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and
given posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important.
5. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an
important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If
that is granted, all else follows.
6. The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable
absurdity.
7. Suddenly, the whole street was in commotion. There were yells of warning from all
sides.
8. A twinge of fear went through him. It had been a sufficiently rash act to buy the book
in the beginning, and he had sworn never to come near the place again. (adj)
9. At the heart of it, magnified by the curved surface, there was a strange, pink,
convoluted object that recalled a rose or a sea anemone.
10. When once you had succumbed to thoughtcrime it was certain that by a given date
you would be dead.
1984 Vocabulary Worksheets
1. Two: I, II, III, IV
Read the sentence and write what you think the underlined word means. You may use a
dictionary or thesaurus. THEN, write a sentence of your own using the vocabulary word.
1. For several seconds he was too stunned even to throw the incriminating thing into
the memory hole.
2. The irritating thing was that Winston could hardly hear what Parsons was saying, and
was constantly having to ask for some fatuous remark to be repeated.
3. It was not safe to go near her until some more people had accumulated.
4. With a sort of military precision that astonished him, she outlined the route that he
was to follow.
5. But for the moment they could not extricate themselves from the crowd.
6. She stood before him very upright, with a smile on her face that looked faintly
ironical, as though she were wondering why he was so slow to act.
7. At the beginning he had no feeling except sheer incredulity.
8. Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence.
9. Perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and selfdenial simply a sham concealing iniquity.
10. Julia appeared to be quite used to this kind of conversation, which she called “talking
by installments.”