Brave New World
Specialized Vocabulary for the Novel
• Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas,
Epsilons: the caste hierarchy in
Utopia.
• Anthrax Bomb: a Pre-Ford weapon
used in germ warfare.
• Bokanovsky Process: a process by
which a human egg has its normal
development arrested. It starts to
bud and produces many identical
eggs.
• Bottling: the stage where artificially
created embryos are put into bottles for
maturation.
• Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy: an intricate
ball game played with complicated
equipment.
• Community Sing: a pseudo-religious
meeting for the lower castes, promoting
fraternity.
• Condition: to put into a desired state
by chemical, physical, or
psychological action
• Ectogenesis: birth outside the human
body.
• Emotional Engineering: the
profession responsible for preparing
propagandistic diversions for the
people.
• Erotic Play: a pastime for Utopian
children, involving exploration of
each other's bodies and meant to
absolve all feelings of guilt associated
with sex.
• Fitchew: a Shakespearean word that
John uses to curse Lenina. Literally a
polecat, but in Shakespeare's day it
also meant a prostitute.
• Five Step: a popular Utopian dance.
• Ford: the Utopian idol, the nearest
equivalent to God.
• Freemartin: a sterilized Utopian
woman
• Internal and External Secretion Trust:
this utopian organization is in charge
of hormones and extracts to keep the
people young and happy.
• Liners and Matriculators: people who
work in the Bottling Room.
• Malthusian Belt: a device worn to
discourage sex in the unsterilized
women to avoid pregnancy.
• Malthusian Drill: another device
meant for the unsterilized women to
avoid pregnancy.
• Orgy-Porgy: a ritual where
indiscriminate, en masse sexual
relations ensure solidarity in the
participants.
• Podsnap's Technique: a process
resulting in speeding up the ripening
of embryos artificially.
• Power Elite: an exclusive and
restricted group which exercises
power by forceful means.
• Pregnancy Substitute: this medical
procedure allows utopian women to
experience the psychological benefits of
childbirth without actually undergoing
it.
• Savage: a person who is born and raised
outside the Utopia and does not know
how to behave according to its rules.
Savages live on Reservations surrounded
by electrified fences. The Savages who
appear in the book resemble Indians of
the Southwest United States.
• Scent and Color Organ: a console that plays
concertos of fragrant aromas and capriccios of
colored lights.
• Sex-hormone Chewing Gum: an artificial
means of gaining sexual satisfaction
• Social Predestination: a process by which a
card file of data on every Utopian is preserved
to establish a quota system for those types of
persons the state intends to create.
• Solidarity Service: a pseudo-religious
gathering to promote fraternity among the
upper castes.
• Subliminal Projection: an image presented to the
sight or words to the hearing for split seconds and
super-imposed upon visual or aural entertainment.
This split-second communication lodges in the
subconscious and greatly influences subsequent
behavior.
• T-Model: the Utopian equivalent of a religious
symbol, meant to be a play upon the Christian
cross; it honors Ford, the founder of this utopian
society and alludes to Henry Ford and the model-T.
• Violent Passion Surrogate (V.P.S.): a chemical
intended to give the body the psychological
experience of having had normal sexual
relations.
• Voice of Good Feeling: the artificial voice that
suppresses any riot by soothing the people
with suggestions of peace through
loudspeakers.
• Will-to-Order: the drive in human beings that
compels them to forge unity out of diversity
to the extent of over-organizing things