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• Nadsat - The language of a Clockwork Orange

Nadsat - The language of a Clockwork Orange

• An Extract from the Book
• The Glossary
• Further Reading

The science fiction novella, A Clockwork Orange, written in 1962, and set in a near dystopian future revolves around a violent youth subculture and specifically the delinquent 15 year old, Alex and his 'droogs' (friends), and his ultimate rehabilitation into society with the use of an experimental cure, after being arrested by the authorities. In keeping with the predeliction of youths for creating and using informal words and slang, the author and linguist, Anthony Burgess, felt it appropriate the protaganist of his story should also use a fictional vocabulary, and one which perhaps should alienate the reader from feeling any affection or sympathy for him. And as the story is told by Alex, in the first person, it is littered with this confusing language throughout. That language was named Nadsat and, along with other informal affectations, such as the juvenile speak, is so widely used throughout the book that in order to enable the reader to easily understand the dialogue, a glossary, written by Stanley Edgar Hyman, was included as an appendix to most early printed editions. Interestingly, Anthony Burgess was against the inclusion of a glossary and refused to assist in compiling it, so consequently there are a few ommisions, mistakes and much speculation; Burgess himself wanted the reader to figure out the language whilst reading the book, and helped by including writing techniques to help with that understanding, for example, in the first few pages he occasionally includes a translation in brackets in the dialogue itself, sometimes in English and sometimes in Nadsat - see extract, below.

More recent editions of the book have included alternative glossaries in an attempt to define Nadsat and thus chosen to exclude certain words, but they all have been criticised for failing in that task, and my less than academic approach and attempt is certainly no better. It is due to those ommisions I felt there was a need for an updated glossary/dictionary, viewable below, and which is based on the Hyman's original glossary, with the addition of Russian etymology, adapted from a later online glossary. The various words of Nadsat itself were frequently adapted from the Russian language, along with a smattering of made up words, some based on known English slang expressions, rhyming slang, and a few from other languages (German, Dutch, Malay, Romani) and where known I have added this information to the glossary, along with a little of my own speculation where necessary.

The film of the book, directed by Stanley Kubrick, was a very successful, if contentious production, starring Malcolm McDowell and released in 1971, it includes much of the Nadsat contained in the actual book. It's a good starting point for engaging with Nadsat if you find the book too difficult.

Below, in case you are new to the book, are the first two pages of A Clockwork Orange so that you might appreciate why a glossary was necessary, and after that a copy of the glossary itself.

An extract from A Clockwork Orange

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim. Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with.

Our pockets were full of deng, so there was no real need from the point of view of crasting any more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry grey haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till's guts. But, as they say, money isn't everything.

The four of us were dressed in the height of fashion, which in those days was a pair of black very tight tights with the old jelly mould, as we called it, fitting on the crotch underneath the tights, this being to protect and also a sort of a design you could viddy clear enough in a certain light, so that I had one in the shape of a spider, Pete had a rooker (a hand, that is), Georgie had a very fancy one of a flower, and poor old Dim had a very hound-and-horny one of a clown's litso (face, that is). Dim not ever having much of an idea of things and being, beyond all shadow of a doubting thomas, the dimmest of we four. Then we wore waisty jackets without lapels but with these very big built-up shoulders ('pletchoes' we called them) which were a kind of a mockery of having real shoulders like that. Then, my brothers, we had these off-white cravats which looked like whipped-up kartoffel or spud with a sort of a design made on it with a fork. We wore our hair not too long and we had flip horrorshow boots for kicking.

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

There were three devotchkas sitting at the counter all together, but there were four of us malchicks and it was usually like one for all and all for one. These sharps were dressed in the heighth of fashion too, with purple and green and orange wigs on their gullivers, each one not costing less than three or four weeks of those sharps' wages, I should reckon, and make-up to match (rainbows round the glazzies, that is, and the rot painted very wide). Then they had long black very straight dresses, and on the groody part of them they had little badges of like silver with different malchicks' names on them - Joe and Mike and suchlike.

Nadsat - the Glossary