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Anthony BurgessA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
These are a representative (yet significant) few of the invented slang terms that author Anthony Burgess uses liberally throughout the book. A mix of Russian-influenced terms and traditional, mostly forgotten, Cockney slang, the language of the “nadsats” (see below) is energetic, creative, and evocative. See the “Language: From Slang to Shakespeare” entry in Symbols & Motifs for more information.
Instead of referring to body parts by their proper, English-language names, the teens in the novel employ a colorful and widely varied set of terms: “gulliver” refers to the head, as in Alex has got “’[a] bit of pain in my gulliver,’” as he says to his parents when he decides to skip school. “Glazzies” are eyes. Two significant incidents in Alex’s story feature his glazzies. First, when Dim chains him across his glazzies and leaves him to be arrested. Second, when Alex submits to Dr. Brodsky’s treatment, “they put like clips on the skin of my forehead, so that my top glazz-lids were pulled up and up and up and I could not shut my glazzies no matter how hard I tried” (117). Given the visual nature of the violence Alex enjoys, glazzies are crucial to his violent entertainment and his subsequent “cure.”
“Rots” signify mouths, and the term implies that what comes out of them is a load of rot. This particular slang term expresses contempt, at least for victims and for authorities. “Rookers” refer to hands, as when Pete “held [the old man’s] rookers” while Dim “yanked out his false zoobies,” which are teeth (9). “Zoobies” are frequently knocked or kicked in. “Litso” refers to a face. Dim wears a codpiece decorated with “a clown’s litso” (4). This turns out to be ironic, as Dim is not at all the clown that he inadvertently advertises he is.
It can be argued that the intention behind this slang is to obscure the reality of the physical self and the reality of other people’s embodied selves. Thus, Alex and his gang can beat people’s gullivers and litsos, knock out their zoobies, hold them down with their rookers, and watch them bleed from their rots without experiencing any remorse. The slang serves as a numbing, distancing device to separate the actual experience from the senseless violence.
Nadsats also discuss the use of language itself in their own specialized lingo. “Govereeting” means having a conversation, while “goloss” indicates the tone of voice in which one is speaking. Alex uses a deferential tone when wheedling his way into the authorities’ good graces: “‘Sir, I have done my best, have I not?’ I always used my very polite gentleman’s goloss govoreeting with those at the top. ‘I’ve tried, sir, haven’t I?’” (94). “Slovos” means words: “And then P.R. Deltoid walked out, without another slovo” (81).
Again, at least part of the purpose of employing a densely packed, slang-riddled style of speaking is to obfuscate meaning. It is intended to separate the nadsats from the authorities: elders and those who are not in on the experience of being a young person in “Modern Society.”
Both “millicents” and “rozzes” refer to the police, while “razrez” is a term describing violence or disruption. The “milkbar” is a place to consume milk spiked with one’s choice of drugs, including “vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom” (3). Alex and his crew frequent the Korova Milkbar, with its Russian-influenced name. A “mesto” is the general term for a place, so the Korova Milkbar is “a milk-plus mesto” (3).
The milkbars reflect the changing culture in specific ways: “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,” or milk (3). Thus, the millicents have no legal recourse to arrest, punish, or control the nadsats who are “hypnotized” by psychedelic visions or amped up with methamphetamine-like drugs that enhance their violent moods.
There are numerous slang terms for money. For Alex, money is both paramount (it affords him whatever he wants) and disposable (he can always conduct another robbery). Money, alongside violence and sexual assault, is another symbolic vehicle for the desire and instant gratification that runs rampant in Alex’s generation. All three terms—“cutter”; “deng”; “pretty polly”—refer to money.
“Pretty polly” is the most evocative, conjuring images of parrots mimicking what they hear with little to no understanding. Without having to work for his pretty polly, Alex does not appreciate the value of money or honest labor. Once he does have a job and a “carman full of pretty polly at the week’s end” (207), he begins to recognize how it feels to earn it rather than to waste it: “There had come into my gulliver a like desire to keep all my pretty polly for myself, to like hoard it all up for some reason” (209). This is both because he is beginning to recognize that his days of robbery and violence are coming to an end—the job will be his only source of income—and that he desires something more meaningful, like a home and a family, for which a savings account will come in handy.
Again, by using obscure slang to refer to other people, Alex and his cohort distance themselves from the humanity of others. “Lewdies” is a general term that simply means people, the populace at large. “Ptitsas” describes unremarkable or middle-aged women; that is, they are not objects of desire for Alex and his droogs. “Baboochkas” refers to older women, like those at the Duke of New York who provide the gang with alibis in exchange for drinks. “Vecks” and “chellovecks” are the male counterparts to ptitsas and baboochkas, basically any male grown out of their youth. “Vecks” are typically considered ideal marks for the nadsats’ violent impulses.
“Horrorshow” is an all-purpose term that means good or excellent, depending on the circumstances. When Alex gins himself up for violence, he notes that “[t]he knives [drugs] in the milk-plus were stabbing away nice and horrorshow now” (11). When Alex comments that the film Dr. Brodsky and his entourage are going to show him must be “‘a real horrorshow film’” (117), the nurse takes it at face value. He suggests that the film will, in fact, be “‘[a] real show of horrors’” (117). There is irony in the use of a frightening term—“horror”—to indicate something positive, as Alex and his droogs use the word. That irony is highlighted by the nurse’s response, wherein he utilizes the standard definition of the word “horror.”
In addition to the above terminology that describes groups of people, nadsat slang also employs specialized terms for particular groups. “Nadsat” refers to young people, particularly the roving bands of disaffected teens who are responsible for much of the senseless violence unleashed in the country. “Droogs” are friends—though there is more to it than ordinary friendship. Droogs are more akin to comrades or brothers, like those belonging to a gang or fighting in the trenches together. With this, loyalty is paramount, as Alex himself indicates: “it was usually like one for all and all for one” (5). This makes his droogs’ subsequent betrayal all the more surprising—or all the more appropriate, considering Alex’s overbearing and unpredictable behavior.
“Devotchkas” refers to attractive women of a certain age; that is, it signifies women who are appropriate for sexual conquest (there is nary an incident in the novel that suggests Alex ever engages in consensual sex). “Malchick” is the male equivalent of devotchka. Alex rarely uses the term except to describe himself or his droogs.
There are a handful of frequently used terms that have vague or transitory definitions. “Veshch” simply means “thing,” and it can be used to gesture at whatever Alex has in his sights. In the first chapter, the drugs in milk are listed specifically, followed by the vague mention of “one or two other veshches” that can be ordered (3). When robbing the Manse, Alex spies “a lovely little veshch” that he must have: a bust of Beethoven (71). In this sense, veshch is akin to loot.
The term “malenky” is also employed frequently, typically meaning “little,” as in Dim suggesting he will be “just that malenky bit late” for the next evening’s activities (36). “Starry” often means incoherent, though it can sometimes imply that something is really good. For example, the old lady of the Manse is a “‘stinking starry old sharp,’” according to Alex (70). At other times, Alex refers to the “starry” warriors in the Old Testament with admiration (91). On another occasion, he talks about his future son, saying he will tell the boy all about his own youthful misadventures when the child is “starry enough to like understand” (217-18). This seems to indicate “old” in the sense of maturity. As with all living languages, especially the specialized lingo of a particular group or the distinct jargon within a specific field, the terms are flexible and malleable enough to be useful under changing circumstances.