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Many people use big words and foreign words in order to sound educated. According to Orwell, what do such words do to a piece of writing?

According to Orwell, using large and/ or foreign words has several effects on writing and society, most or all of which are bad.


Orwell develops a number of categories of language use. One of these is "pretentious diction." That's where this sort of language would most often fall. Orwell says people use this sort of inflated language to "dress up" simpler ideas. So, the first impact is to make basic thoughts seem more important than they are. A related issue is that people use this language to make biased perspectives seem objective. That goes beyond an impact on language; it affects society and politics.


Another of Orwell's categories is "meaningless words." Long and foreign words are often meaningless, or close to meaningless. As a result, these words are wasteful.


In general, what Orwell calls "inflated style" works to blur key details and "corrupt thought." It gets in the way of understanding and makes us think worse.

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