Welcome to the New Expanded Illustrated Orwelexicon.
BANNED BY PSYCHOLOGY TODAY! Years ago, I submitted an earlier version of this there as a blog post and they took it down. In 12 short hours, it had garnered well over 1000 views, a bullet of popularity in PsychTodayLand. It was my first experience with increasing censoriousness at Psychology Today, which eventually led me to abandon blogging there and come here. The original short version was published in Quillette after Psych Today censored it; an expanded but not illustrated (nor as expanded as this one) version can be found here. Only about half the entries are completely original; credits appear in the expanded Orwelexicon. The other half were provided or inspired by commenters on X or were basically collaborations between them.
Most of the art is by @the_apollonic, who you can find on X, using the AI art generator, Dall-e 3. I generated the rest, using Night Cafe. Now, without further ado…
The New Expanded Illustrated Orwelexicon
Academic Facebooters (noun), Facebooting (adj): Academics seeking to punish other academics for wrongthink. Inspired by this Orwell 1984 quote, “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
Adminomania: A delusion that increased administrative and bureaucratic intrusions into people’s lives will actually improve something, fueled primarily by a pervasive blindness to unintended negative side effects. See especially the tendency for administrative organs to erode due process protections (Title IX) and punish people for infractions they did not actually commit or for which incriminating evidence is ambiguous at best.
Alliesheimers disease: A memory loss condition whereby one conveniently forgets one’s widely espoused principles of equity and inclusion when providing “allyship” to those on your side by attempting to stigmatize, punish, or ostracize those on the other side.
Anti-racism: The ideology and practices that both liberate progressives to engage in full-blown authoritarianism against their enemies (cancelation attacks, bullying, mobbing, attempts to punish people for thoughtcrimes), and renders them, especially White progressives, particularly vulnerable to propaganda, bullshit, and outright lies, IF they are invoked in the name of fighting racism. See Fiedler on the Roof for an example; see Academic Facebooters, Bias Bias, Chapeaurougaphobia, and Nazinoia for manifestations. In the name of anti-racism almost 1400 academics took at face value an absurd accusation invoking a non-existent “racist mule trope” and signed on online letter with clear echoes of practices common under communist and Nazi regimes:
Argle Bargle. This rhetorical style, made famous by progressive activist Freddie deBoer, combines outrage and dismissiveness in word-salad-like denunciations readily found on X by academics and others.
Here are some examples Freddie provided:
Post:
There’s been a lot of debate lately about the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. Critics suggest that such lessons simply exacerbate existing racial tensions, but defenders argue tha -
Parry:
“CRT IS ONLY FOR LEGAL AND GRADUATE EDUCATION, NO ONE IS TEACHING CRT IN K-12 SCHOOLS, THE IDEA THAT THERE’S CRT HAPPENING IN K-12 SCHOOLS IS A CONSERVATIVE CONSPIRACY THEORY WHO ARE YOU TUCKER CARLSON ARGLE BARGLE”
Post:
OK, certainly I acknowledge that a deliberate Chinese leak seems implausible, but there seems to be a much more credible and still-essential question of whether or not the virus was being studied and potentially made more lethal in a Wuhan lab prior to -
Parry:
“YOU THINK THE CHINESE INTENTIONALLY RELEASED A BIOWEAPON INTO THE WORLD WHEN THAT COULD POTENTIALLY CRIPPLE ITS OWN ECONOMY, HAHAHA WHAT A DELUDED IDIOT, WHAT’S NEXT CHEMTRAILS, WHY DON’T YOU GO TO A QANON MEETING ARGLE BARGLE”
Argumentum ad Dormativum: Rather than refute an argument, someone with this disorder simply dismisses it with some variation on: “This tiresome idea again?”
Athletic gynocide: The elimination from sports competitions of people identified at birth by doctors or other adults as female because they cannot successfully compete with people identified at birth by doctors or other adults as males but who identify as females.
Bad Faith Argument: Those who publicly disagree with me even after failing to be persuaded by the brilliance of my analysis.
Bias bias: A bias for seeing biases, often manifesting as either claiming bias when none exists, exaggerating biases that do exist, or overgeneralizing to large swaths of life from studies finding bias in some narrow or specific context.
Bigotry Denialism: A claim that only certain people, usually based on immutable characteristics, can be racists or bigots, whereas others are immune. For example, the claim that only White people can be racist or only men can be sexist.
Binaryphobia: Fear that some things really are binary.
Biomindophobia: Fear that biology influences the mind.
Blancocentric Delusion: Delusion that “whiteness” is the source of most bad things.
Blancofemophobia: Prejudice against white women, as exemplified by dismissing the beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors of White women with phrases such as, “White women white womening.” Go here for a real world example.
BlueStasi: A better name for Bluesky, the platform to which hordes of academics and progressives (but I repeat myself) fled after Elon took over Twitter, now X. See also Nazinoia, Elon Terror and Twitler. If you never heard of the Stasi, they were the East German secret police when East Germany was under communist rule.
And if that isn’t bad enough, see our recent research report finding … wait for it … you probably will think I am making this up … 78% of users of BlueSky at least partially endorsed the murder of the UHC CEO, the highest among users of platforms we examined. Am I hearing echoes of the Kulaks?
Brexistential fear: An irrational fear that Brexit will lead to the end of the world as we know it.
Bropenscience Paradox: The claim that sexism is so powerful in the Open Science Movement that all male scientists must intensely interrogate themselves for any trace of it. Male scientists must also avoid having conversations without women or members of marginalized groups; and they must especially avoid criticizing scientific work by people from such groups. Although sexism is a very serious problem and charge, objecting to being called sexist is proof of defensiveness and pathological fragility.
Brophobia: Fear and loathing of men having a conversation among themselves, including on social media where there are no barriers to anyone participating.
Cancelophobia: Fear of being canceled, usually followed by self-censorship.
Cathy Newmanism: Those wracked by this intellectually debilitating condition are incapable of responding to others’ actual statements. You can tell you have this condition if, instead of responding to an actual statement, you rephrase it in such a manner as to accuse the person you are interacting with of a far more extreme & even ridiculous claim than they actually made. You then react with incredulity and outrage that the person you are talking with made such a ridiculous claim that they never made but you made for them. “So what you are really saying is [followed by a ridiculous caricaturization].” Made famous by this interview of Jordan Peterson by Cathy Newman. I was Cathy Newmaned by Susan Fiske before Cathy Newmanism was a thing, as I described here.
Chapeaurougeauphobia: Fear and loathing of Trump supporters.
Cisandrophobia: Fear of and prejudice against heterosexual men.
Civil Discourse: The social norms requiring you to treat me with calm dignity and respect, but which permit me to denounce you, publicly shame you, damage your reputation with baseless accusations and fling vile insults at you and everything you stand for.
Cringecrickets: People whose brains are so rotted by ideology that all sense of humor, parody, and fun has been irrecoverably lost, and when first coming on The Orwelexicon, compulsively chirp, “Cringe. Cringe. Cringe.” or “Cringeworthy! Cringeworthy! Cringeworthy!”
Cultural Cultism: The belief that all cultures are equally valid, except for the capitalist, liberal cultures of the democratic west, which, despite having raised a billion people out of the abject poverty that plagued most of humanity for millennia, and freed them from the choking grip of aristocrats and tyrants, is depraved and needs to be disrupted and dismantled.
Cultural Parasitism: An ideology parasitizes the mind, changing the host’s behavior so they spread it to other people. Therefore, a successful ideology (the only kind we hear about) is not configured to be true; it is configured only to be easily transmitted and easily believed.
Decontextaphilia: An unhealthy attraction to quoting others out of context.
Definitiontrap: Avoidance of definitions, or arbitrarily changing meanings of words, to advance political arguments.
Delusional Constitutionalism: The belief that the U.S. Constitution mandates that, politically, everything you oppose, including election outcomes, is unconstitutional; and that, if SCOTUS rules otherwise, it shows them to be corrupt, cowardly & depraved. No political tribal or ideological camp is immune to this self-serving yet debilitating condition. One pandemic of it occurred among Trump supporters in the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election. Another occurred in 2025, when, in response to Trump’s executive orders, often about reforming or attacking (depending on one’s view) academia, legions of academics with no expertise in either fascism or constitutional law took to social media to denounce Trump’s actions as “fascist” and “unconstitutional,” often in response to some lower court issuing a nationwide injunction against implementing the Trump executive order. This is amusing in context of the Supreme Court decision ruling that the lower courts lack authority to issue injunctions against nationwide implementation of presidential executive orders and henceforth banning them from doing so.
Denunciation Dancing: The ultimate response to the rising tide of denunciations, outrage, social media mobbing, and attempts to “cancel” people; ginning up a counter-outrage mob to denounce the denouncers.
Department of Conclusion. A bold new innovation in which an academic department is filled with people who know what the “right” conclusion is, in the absence of evidence, in the presence of weak evidence, or in the presence of conflicting and contradictory evidence. These groundbreaking cutting edge departments will be filled with people who “know” that gaps result entirely from discrimination, there are no biologically-based behavioral or psychological differences between men and women, everything is entirely culturally constructed, gender-affirming care is the only appropriate response to a new expression of gender dysphoria, stereotypes are inaccurate, everything needs to be decolonized, Europeans invented slavery, capitalism needs to be dismantled, in the 21st century there is massive discrimination against women and nonWhite minorities, and much much more. (Term developed by a collaboration of three philosophers: Brandon Warmke, Rishi Joshi, and Patrick Brooks).
DiAngelo Paradox: The claim that racism is so harmful that all moral white people must intensely interrogate themselves for any trace of it & so trivial that objecting to being called racist is proof of pathological fragility. See White Fragility, a book by Robin DiAngelo.
Diaphobia: Fear and loathing of civil dialogue with one’s opponents.
Diversity Inversity: The delusional belief prevalent in progressive and academic circles that, in law, "diversity" only refers to "oppressed groups." In fact, civil rights law and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment apply to everyone, and SCOTUS decisions have always defined diversity broadly to include the full range of people who make up America.
Dogmaflares: Signals necessary to maintain your ideologically acceptable status to your ingroup. Especially common among academics who are often required to emit dogmaflares when having conversations w/conservatives, publishing in conservative outlets, or publishing counter social justice narrative data. “I’m just as progressive as most of you, but here are the data.”
Dysrationalia: The inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence. See Whackademics, Emotional Imperialism, Ideologically-Infused Delusion Disorder, Narraphilia, & Nazinoia.
Elitophilia: An unhealthy infatuation with academic and intellectual elites, and especially their ideas and products.
Elon Terror: The irrational fear of Elon Musk after his takeover of Twitter (now X) that led hordes of far left academics to flee to other platforms such as Bluesky.
Emotional imperialism: The strange belief that your feelings should dictate someone else’s behavior.
Entitlement Preference Dysphoria: A pathological confusion of “things I want” with “things I am entitled to.” Sometimes this manifests as rhetorical claims to rights enshrined nowhere.
Epistemological dichotomania: Misconstruing things that are complex and nuanced as dichotomies. (Note: “epistemology” is one of those GRE words that I only use when in full egghead mode. It basically means “our beliefs about where knowledge comes from.”).
Epistemological impugnment: A form of intellectual bullying that involves declaring or implying that a claim should not be believed, not on the basis of logic or evidence showing it to be false, but by tainting the source with real or imagined failings in some other area. This often manifests as unsubstantiated allegations and guilt-by-association. See Equalitimidation.
Epistemic trespassing: This occurs when people who have bona fide expertise or competence to reach good conclusions and judgments in one domain or field move to another field in which they lack expertise or competence and confidently pass judgment nonetheless. Accountants pontificating on climate science, critical theorists condemning evolutionary psychology, chemistry professors pontificating about DEI, social psychologists pontificating about Middle East conflict, or physics professors making proclamations about implicit bias are all common examples. Epistemic trespassers usually deserve about the same credibility you would give to used car dealers opining about medical care.
Equalitarianism: A dogmatic, quasi-religious belief that all groups are equal on all traits that matter, usually accompanied by the belief that the only credible source of group differences is discrimination and outrage at anyone who suggests otherwise.
Equalitimidation: A form of intellectual bullying characterized by the use of name-calling, insults, smears, stigmatization, and guilt-by-association to frighten into silence those who might otherwise oppose coercive, confiscatory, and compulsory government or institutional policies, or scientific, intellectual and academic rhetoric used to advance certain views as to what constitutes Social Justice.
And now for a brief interlude:
Europhobia: Fear of Europeans and prejudice against Europeans, their descendants, and practices and ideas that originated in Europe.
Evopsychophobia: Fear of evolutionary psychology, especially of the possibility that social groups (such as men and women) might have evolved different psychological traits and behavioral tendencies.
Fascism: Anything advocated by my political opponents. We’re All Fascists Now is one of the last NYTimes editorials authored by Bari Weiss, who was effectively purged, and has since founded both The Free Press and The University of Austin.
Fascist: My political opponents.
drwatson (below) is no longer on X (formerly Twitter). She is a professor of Educational Leadership at CUNY. I think the tweet is circa 2020 during that election cycle. See also Twhackademics, Whackademics and Wokademics elsewhere in The Illustrated Orwelexicon. The cartoon on the right is a bit blurry, so a clearer version of it follows.
The cartoon on the left was a call for civility and bridging political differences. The one on the right belongs in the Orwelexicon, but its a bit blurry so here it is again:
FIBS, Falsehood Immunodeficiency Bacillus Syndrome: An autoimmune disease in which the protective membrane that encases truth-seeking systems becomes inflamed and attacks itself debilitating one’s ability to distinguish truth from propaganda, lies, and fiction.
Fiedler on the Roof. This is a true story. An editor of a psych journal (Fiedler) was ousted by a wokademic mob for accepting five papers critical of DEI by senior White academics. One (mine) used "there was the time he sold him a horse but delivered a mule" -- a quote from Fiddler on the Roof -- as a metaphor to characterize progressive duplicity around "diversity." This proved (to the mob) that he, I and all the other contributors are racists.
Framework Psychosis: Dr. Pill, who first identified this acute and chronic pathology, defined it as: “A new and dangerous affliction sweeping through academia like wildfire, is the unhealthy (and unfounded) belief that one’s framework, whatever it may be, is the one true framework.” It is characterized by one or more of the following symptoms:
Belief that your framework can explain everything in one’s field.
Inability to suffer dissent.
Spending more time criticizing things than generating original research.
Finding it difficult or impossible to discuss anything in one’s field in any terms other than The Framework.
Interpreting challenges as personal attacks.
Despising and shunning all those who differ, even if they differ merely in minor interpretations of The Framework.
Genetophobia: Fear of genetic explanations for human behaviors, competencies, traits, and preferences. Often manifests as blank slatism and environmental determinism.
Grift: Any benefit, including but not restricted to money, that accrues to people for advocating views that I oppose.
Heterophobia: Fear of and prejudice against heterosexual men and women.
Hierophobia: Fear of and prejudice against hierarchies.
Hard of Thinking, H.O.T. Self-explanatory. For examples, see most of the other Orwelexicon entries.
Human Egg Cartons: Humans that contain eggs. Usage: Hillary was the first human egg carton to be nominated by a major political party to run for President. Replaces “female” which, because anyone can now identify as female, is no longer informative about biology.
Hypocritical Theory: Academic ideas that, by criticizing ways in which power, status and injustice are embedded in everything but itself, usurps power for its adherents who then eliminate protections for speech, inquiry, association and due process because they are morally superior.
Idea laundering. An article makes a claim without evidence, or with evidence that does not justify its main claim, is then cited by another, which is cited by another, and so on, until the range of citations creates the impression that the claim has strong, abundant evidence, when really all articles are citing the same source that never had any strong evidence, and maybe even no evidence at all, to start with. The concept has many roots, including this 2019 WSJ op ed by Peter Boghossian, who attributes the coining of the term to Bret Weinstein. We described the process in this 2016 chapter as an intellectual black hole, because when one looks for a primary source supporting a claim, it cannot be found. Wikipedia has referred to the process as the “Woozle” effect for a long time. This term comes from a Winnie-the-Pooh story in which Winnie leads a hunt for the Woozle by following tracks — that he and his friends had made previously.
Identity colonialism. The presumption that you can speak for a marginalized group, including your own. Unless elected, you cannot speak for anyone but yourself.
Ideologically-Infused Delusion Disorder: Ideologies and intense political tribal loyalties often induce pathological delusions among their adherents, usually regarding the “other side” or those they see as their opponents. The IIDD is the modern descendant of Freud’s Id, the repository of all things irrational, primal, and unconscious. Trump Derangement Syndrome was a common manifestation on the left; Delusional Constitutionalism was a common manifestation among Trump supporters around the 2020 election and among progressives in 2025 who repeatedly declared Trump’s various policies “unconstitutional” without a single SCOTUS case ruling so (although FIRE recently (this update written August, 2025) filed a suit against the administration for violating the First Amendment for revoking visas and deporting people for what it believes — as do I — are violations of the First Amendment).
Implicit ESP Delusions: People afflicted by these delusions have an unarticulated belief that they can read others’ minds. It would sound silly if it was articulated. How, then, can it be diagnosed? These delusions often manifest as accusations that someone else is disingenuous or insincere; also, that the accuser knows someone’s “real” motivations. It can also manifest as attribution of beliefs, attitudes and mental states, especially depraved ones, to someone with whom they merely disagree with. These delusions can manifest among anyone but are particularly prevalent online, and especially among Twhackademics and Twokademics.
Intersectional Self-Serving Schizoidism. An intellectual illness among woke ideologues who confuse being deeply endarkened by grievance dogmas with enlightenment. This can manifest as accusations that those who criticize their dogma or fellow ideologues are “lacking in self-awareness.” People with Intersectional Self-Serving Schizoidism have trouble expressing any emotions but outrage and trouble interacting with anyone other than other Intersectional Self-Serving Schizoids.
Inverted epistemology: Epistemological dichotomania for concepts that are nuanced; binaryphobia for concepts that are dichotomous.
IQaphobia: Fear of measuring intelligence because one believes that only Nazis and Eugenicists do that.
Irony deficient: Being unaware, or willfully ignorant, of one’s own absurd statements. Acts as an armor of ignorance.
Istaphobia: Fear of beling called an “ist” (racist, sexist, fascist, etc.), usually followed by self-censorship.
Jelly Journals: Academic journals run by editors so spineless they retract papers not for fraud or errors but because outrage mobs tell them to do so. This is often justified by “reasons” that apply to most published academic journal articles that are not retracted. See also “Selectivus Rigorus Mortis.”
I’m-not-an-antisemite-splaining: Progressive woke activists, whackademics and wokademics explaining why Jews are colonial oppressors who deserve neither their success nor their own country, despite Jews being indigenous to Israel and having been slaughtered and ethnically cleansed from nearly every place they have lived (mostly, Europe and the Middle East) going back centuries. I’m-not-an-antisemite-splainers, though characteristically throwing around accusations of various “isms” and “phobias” (racism, sexism, Islamaphobia, transphobia, etc) also remind Jews that accusing anyone of antisemitism is merely an attempt to “silence” them, and that the intimidation, harassment, and exclusion experienced by American Jews in the wake of the 2023-2024 Gaza War was merely “legitimate protest.” See Nonviolence.
Kafkatrap: A rhetorical move whereby protesting your innocence is interpreted as proving your guilt. Example: If you deny that you are a racist, it proves you are a racist, the central idea of DiAngelo’s White Fragility.
Lexophobia imperfectus: Fear of offending someone by saying the wrong thing. Although this condition characterizes even healthy people from time to time, it can be greatly exaggerated by bias reporting systems, coddling, equalitimidation and emotional imperialism.
Liberal Inverted Hitler: Although those on the far left tend to see Nazis and fascists everywhere (see Fascism, Fascist, Nazinoia, Progressive Tinnitus), liberals actually endorsed Hitler’s rhetoric at astonishingly high rates IF “Jew” was replaced by “White people.” This is an actual empirical result, from the most widely-read post at Unsafe Science: Who Agrees with Hitler? (guest post by Michael Bernstein and April Bleske-Rechek, who conducted the study). Here is one of the key results:
Y-axis is percent of respondents (all liberals in this analysis) who agreed with at least one of three statements made by Hitler about Jews (far left), when “White people” replaced “Jews” (middle) and when “Black people” replaced “Jews” (far right).
These results raise the eternal question, “Who are the modern Nazis?”
Marxism denialist: Someone who conveniently ignores or forgets that Marxism/Communism has been a brutal disaster whenever it has achieved national hegemony, or argues “it was not real Marxism,” or dismisses the relevance of that brutal history. These symptoms are usually accompanied by further ones, such as camouflaging Marxist ideas/ideology in social science neologisms (such as “system justification theory”), compelling narratives, benevolent intentions and cures to bona fide injustices (see narraphilia).
Meritophobia: Fear and loathing of judging people on their merits.
Miquarkressions: Racist, sexist, or other bigoted actions so infinitesimal no one has ever seen or experienced one but academics, intersectionalists, postmodernists, and critical theorists KNOW THEY ARE THERE.
Misbackboned: Assigned vertebrate at birth, but actually spineless. Describes every academic who, despite their cushy jobs and tenure protections, avoid publicly supporting ideas and people they believe in, because they fear repercussions.
Misinformation: Any claim, no matter how well-evidenced, put forward by my political opponents.
Narraphilia: Infatuation with compelling narratives combined with a reckless disregard for truth or evidence.
Nazinoia: A delusional tendency to see Nazis as hiding behind ideas or practices one opposes, and by accusing anyone supporting Brexit or to the right of Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and Kamala Harris of being Nazis, fascists, white supremacists, or alt-right.
Nonviolence: Any protest activity by those I agree with, no matter how much it involves intimidation, vandalism, rioting, looting, or other forms of violence.
Objectivity Paradox: "There is no objectivity. This is objectively true." The logical incoherence at the heart of various postmodern and critical theories.
Many people have heard of Occam’s Razor — a guiding principle suggesting that it is usually best to keep things as simple as possible. In science, it suggests that, all else equal, simpler models and theories are better than more complex ones. However, many people are not aware that Occam provided a host of principles and resources to use in order to advance social justice.
Occam’s intersectional toolbox: A set of powerful rhetorical tools useful for advancing intersectionality, critical theory, and Social Justice. For examples, see Alliesheimer’s disease, Emotional Imperialism, Identity Colonialism, Kafkatrap, Occam’s shoehorn, Occam’s trumpet, Fascism, Narraphilia, Nazinoia, Problematicus panoramicus, and Subjectiphilia.
Occam’s shoehorn: What you use to fit the data to your narrative, no matter how difficult.
Occam’s trumpet: Ignoring all possible alternatives to “bias” as explanations for inequality and triumphantly proclaiming that bias is pervasive.
Omniscience Delusion: A failure to distinguish between “My arguments are so compelling only a pigheaded fool would not see their wisdom” and “Even though I think my arguments are brilliant, they have failed to persuade someone who rejects them after both understanding them and taking them seriously.” See Grievance Studies Sting.
One-Eyed Watchdog: Someone who presents as concerned about an issue (antisemitism, free speech, death threats, political violence, lack of scientific rigor in some study, etc.) but only speaks up when political opponents commit the transgression, while guilty allies are ignored or defended.
One Thought Verse: Most of you may not realize that Orwell and Tolkien collaborated on this poem:
One Thought to Rule Them All
One Thought to Bind Them
One Thought to Bring Them All
And in the Darkness Bind Them
Ovaryaction: Compulsion to create neologisms such as mansplaining and bropenscience, attributing to men nonexistent flaws, interpreting normal behavior (eg, having a discussion) as problematic, turning bona fide male faux pas into EVIL INCARNATE, and generally reacting to such behavior with extreme hostility. Ovaryaction is not a sexist term because it can apply to men and women. For example, men who engage in woke-signaling their “allyship” to anyone engaging in this sort of behavior are having ovaryactions. See also alliesheimers disease and emotional imperialism.
Peripheplaint. AKA defective deflective dunking, this is a rhetorical technique used to discredit a major argument by finding flaw with a minor or even trivial subcomponent of that argument, which, even if the minor argument is flawed, would not invalidate the major argument.
Phobophobia: Fear of being called a “phobe” (Islamaphobe, trans-phobe, etc.). Usually followed by self-censorship.
Phrenological Phlatulence: The inability to prevent one’s orifices from intermittent ejaculations of “phrenology!” or “phrenologist!” or reference to “Calipers!” (used in phrenology) when one is exposed to work on intelligence and IQ, especially scientific work on group differences. This usually stems from Phrenological reflux disease.
Phrenological Reflux Disease. An inability to intellectually digest research on intelligence and IQ, especially work on group differences or on the genetic bases of individual differences in intelligence. Its main symptom is Phrenological phlatulence.
Poe’s Dysphoria. Inability to recognize the humor in parody. If this manifests in failure to recognize parody of one’s own side, but wild guffaws at parody of the other side, it is likely produced by ideology rotting the brain. A relative of Poe’s Law (the inability to distinguish truth from parody especially on social media).
Problematicus Panoramicus: A unique ability to paint anything anyone or any group has ever thought, done, or possessed as problematic, often including the ability to reference peer reviewed or mainstream media articles saying so. See the Unsafe Science post, Is Everything “Problematic?”, for more (such as “proof” that dogwalking and commenting on a nice day are racist).
Progressive Tinnitus: An auditory impairment manifesting as hearing racist dogwhistles everywhere.
Quackademic: A person in academia who should not be allowed around students.
Quantophrenia: Excessive reliance on statistics, especially in areas that are not quantifiable. Courtesy of John D. Cook.
Racebsion: An excessive, persistent, disturbed and disturbing assumption that race is at the center of everything. See the 1619 Project.
Rapid Onset Epistemological Dysphoria: An inexplicable, sudden reversion to emotional imperialism, Nazinoia, and Subjectiphilia, by people otherwise trained in science, logic, mathematics, statistics, and analytical thinking. Frequently manifesting as Equalitimidation, Reductio ad Hitlerum and Righteous outragophilia.
Reductio ad Hitlerum: Treating ideas and arguments one opposes as reflecting Nazism, fascism, or white supremacy. See Godwin’s Law and Nazinoia.
Regressive Stack: The idea that certain people should be silenced because they fall on the high status (losing) end of the Oppression Olympics.
Rhetorical Gerrymandering: Changing the meanings of words to advance an argument.
Righteous Outragophilia: Obsession with proving your righteousness by expressing outrage at others for not subscribing to your subjective opinions, or for their real or, more frequently, imagined minor failings and flaws.
Rigorus Mortus Selectivus: Killing social science through selective calls for rigor. Frequently manifests as denouncing work one opposes on ostensibly scientific grounds that one never applies to work one supports. The original Orwelexicon was actually cited in this peer reviewed paper which focuses on revealing how rigorus mortis selectivus is exploited by outrage mobs to get papers retracted that they find offensive.
Schrödinger’s Feminist: Where a woman is simultaneously a victim and empowered until something happens and she collapses into one of these states, whichever is politically expedient for her current circumstance. Term coined by Melissa Chen.
Science-Pseudoscience Delusions: A delusion whereby a person believes that, by labeling work they dislike, disapprove of, or disagree with “pseudoscience” or “fringe science,” they have shown that it is less valid than work they like, approve of, or agree with.
Shill gambit: An attempt to discredit one’s opponent’s arguments by suggesting that any payment for services rendered leaves the payee a malignant, jabbering puppet of the payer. See also Grift.
Semantic Pedantics: A semantics quibble in service to a distortion. Example here:
Sperm-cannons: Living organism that, if healthy, upon reaching maturity, is capable of producing sperm, or, if no longer capable, once was. Usage: “As of 2025, 47 sperm-cannons will have served as Presidents of the United States.” Replaces “male” which, because anyone can now identify as male, is no longer informative about biology.
Stringgressions: Infinitesimal acts of aggression that no one has ever seen but which critical theorists know are there because they can detect the racist vibes. Stringgressions are the building blocks of all other __aggressions, such as microaggressions, microinsults, microinvalidations and The Orwlexicon’s own miquarkressions.
Subjectiphilia: An infatuation with subjective experience as empirically triumphant. E.g., using “lived experience” as if it could end an argument.
Tautological armor: Reversing cause and effect as needed in order to render oneself morally invulnerable.
“I only consider research credible if its been peer reviewed.”
“Why?”
“Because only peer reviewed research is credible.”
Triggeritis inexplicablus: Outbursts and meltdowns in response to reading or hearing certain unwelcome words or ideas.
Trollusions: A pathological tendency to see those who bluntly disagree with you as trolls, disingenuous, or arguing in “bad faith.” See Implicit ESP delusions.
Trumpcession: An intellectually debilitating condition, common among academics and progressive activists more generally, characterized by obsession with attributing bad events to Trump and Trump supporters.
Trumpulsion: Another intellectually debilitating condition, also common among academics and progressive activists, characterized by difficulty focusing on anything but Trump when he was/is in office as President.
Twitler: The delusional belief, common among progressives, especially progressive academics, that Twitter (now X) became overwhelmed by Nazis and fascists.
Twhackademia: Nutcase academic ideas on Twitter. A twhackademic is an academic promoting nutcase ideas on Twitter.
Twitterphobia deficientus: Not worrying quite enough about how other people might perceive what you tweet.
Twokademia: Academic grievance grandstanding on Twitter.
U-Anon. Conspiracy theories emerging from academia, such as “parasitic Whiteness,” various Unidentified Flying Systems of Oppression, and the presumption, without evidence or consideration of alternative explanations, that inequalities one considers unjust result from discrimination.
Underrepresentation Misrepresentation: Claiming to provide largesse to “groups because they are underrepresented” when actually selectively choosing groups on Social Justice grounds and ignoring underrepresented groups that do not fit the agenda. For example, conservatives are usually the most underrepresented group in academia and, as far as I know, never eligible for anything. Use of “underrepresentation” in progressive and academic circles is a clear case of Rhetorical Gerrymandering.
Undo Process: Reckless disregard for due process protections for those accused of demographic-related violations (e.g., harassment, bias, discrimination).
Unidentified Flying Errors. UFE’s refer to vague and unsubstantiated “errors” in work that one merely opposes or dislikes. There is an epidemic of UFEs in outrage mob petitions calling to retract papers that the mob simply opposes.
Unidentified Flying Harms. UFH’s refer to vague and unsubstantiated “harms” supposedly caused by work that one merely opposes or dislikes. There is an epidemic of UFH’s in outrage mob petitions and social media dogpiles calling to retract papers that the mob simply opposes.
Unidentified Flying Systems of Oppression (UFSOs): Reference to systems that create injustice or inequality without feeling any need to actually provide evidence for their existence independent of the injustice or injustice itself. See also U-Anon.
Veritophobia: Fear of truth and evidence.
Victimhood Appropriation: Embracing victimhood status, whether justified or not, in order to rhetorically seize moral superiority and make your opponents shut up and go away.
Vizzinimania: Crowing about the supposed accuracy of one’s convictions and insulting anyone who believes otherwise, whilst being horrifically, outrageously mistaken. Named for Vizzini, a spectacularly arrogant villain from The Princess Bride, overconfident in his own brilliance, who is outsmarted by The Dread Pirate Roberts, drinks poison, and ends up dead.
Whackademia: Nutcase ideas that emerge from academia.
Wokademia: Academic grievance grandstanding.
Wokanniblism: A low-carb, high-protein diet consisting mainly of eating your own.
Woke Fragility: Histrionic woke reactions, reminiscent of 19th century fainting schoolgirls, when exposed to arguments critical of, or evidence inconsistent with, their sacred narratives. These often include wild claims of Unidentified Flying Harms and Unidentified Flying Errors in calls to punish others in the name of “safety” although neither the danger, the actual harm, or the errors are actually identified. One can often experience this, in academia, tech, or the mainstream media if one has the unmitigated gall to challenge notions such as colonialism as unmitigated evil, pervasive White supremacy, implicit bias, and sexism in the 21st century USA; woke initiatives (such as race-based hiring and admissions preferences and critical race theory-drenched diversity trainings); the supposedly unmitigated evils of capitalism and/or advocating equality before the law, due process, universal human rights and equal opportunity rather than equality of outcomes.
This is hilarious -- bravo, Lee! A treasure trove of cartoons for every occasion -- I can use a few every day.
Add,
Treason: Used by people who have not read the definition in the Constitution for anything done by someone in the Other party which the speaker disapproves of. Both tribes are prone to this.