Thoughtcrime

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The crime of harboring opinions or beliefs that go against the official ideology of a state, even if they are never expressed in action
2. Holding forbidden ideas that defy the ruling authority's doctrine, an offence considered punishable even without any outward act
3. Mental dissent from an authoritarian regime's orthodoxy, regarded as a criminal act in itself despite no visible deed

Etymology: George Orwell coined "thoughtcrime" in his 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, where it names the offence of holding opinions that the Party has declared unacceptable. The word is a plain compound of "thought" and "crime", and in the novel it is less a matter of wrongdoing than of mental disposition: the Party treats an unorthodox idea itself as the transgression, whether or not any act follows. Orwell built the term from two ordinary English words, so its force comes from the pairing. "Crime" normally requires an action, and "thought" normally belongs to private, harmless inner life. Joining them makes a state of mind a punishable offence, which is exactly the idea the novel's totalitarian regime depends on. Because the word was invented for a specific piece of fiction, its meaning is tied to Orwell's portrait of a surveillance state rather than to any older tradition.

Synonyms: thought crime