of or like the society portrayed by Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-four, in which a totalitarian state exercises almost total control over the public and private activities of the citizens
Orwellian in American English
(ɔrˈweliən)
adjective
of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or resembling the literary work of George Orwell or the totalitarian future described in his antiutopian novel 1984 (1949)
Word origin
[1945–50; orwell + -ian]This word is first recorded in the period 1945–50. Other words that entered Englishat around the same time include: beeper, ergative, individual medley, shootout, taxi squad-ian is a suffix occurring originally in adjectives borrowed from Latin, formed from nounsdenoting places (Italian) or persons (Flavian), and now productively forming English adjectives by extension of the Latin pattern.Attached to geographical names, it denotes provenance or membership (Washingtonian), the latter sense now extended to membership in social classes, religious denominations,etc. (Episcopalian; pedestrian). Attached to personal names, it has the additional senses “contemporary with” ( Victorian) or “proponent of” (Hegelian; Freudian) the person specified by the noun base. It also occurs in a set of personal nouns,mainly loanwords from French, denoting one who engages in, practices, or works withthe referent of the base noun (comedian; grammarian; theologian)