It was 23 years ago today, according to George Orwell, that Winston Smith wrote in his diary "Down with Big Brother!"

(来源：最老牌的英语学习网站 EnglishCN.com)

George Orwell was a pen name; Winston Smith was a fictional character, and Big Brother was Orwell's name for the personification of the power of the state—the power that broke the protagonist Winston—in his dystopian novel, 1984. (来源：英语图片 http://photo.englishcn.com)

Although the lower-case big brother had been around since the previous century with the senses "older brother," or "a man who befriends a delinquent or friendless boy," the appearance of the capitalized Big Brother in 1949's 1984 quickly caught on with the public. (来源：英语麦当劳 http://www.EnglishCN.com)

More than five decades later, Big Brother is understood as both "the leader of an authoritarian state or movement" and "an all-powerful government or organization monitoring and directing people's actions." (来源：英语图片 http://photo.englishcn.com)

Two other terms from 1984 also were embraced by English speakers: newspeak, which Orwell described as "language designed to diminish the range of thought," and which is used for any "propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings;" and doublethink, naming "a simultaneous belief in two contradictory ideas."

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