This post is inspired by an online discussion of how the word “Orwellian” should be used. One person argued it should refer only to authoritarian dictatorships. I disagreed. That got me thinking of other words based on authors’ names, such as “Kafkaesque,” “Machiavellian,” and “Dickensian.” How broadly or narrowly should we use those words? Is there any basis for agreement?

The subject here is words that are reminiscent of something in the author’s work. Adjectives that denote the author’s ideas directly, such as “Jeffersonian,” “Marxist,” and “Freudian” are easier to deal with; they should refer to something the author has said, or they’re being used incorrectly. But words that indicate reminiscences are trickier. Any writer worth becoming an adjective writes about more than one thing and approaches them from more than one angle.

Even if we look only at 1984 and ignore the rest of Orwell’s works, he addresses more than one issue. The techniques of Big Brother’s government can be found in situations that aren’t totalitarian. “Doublethink” refers to holding two contradictory ideas at once and seeing no problem, and people often do that with no coercion. “Newspeak” is the restriction of the language to restrict thinking, and anyone with a bit of influence can attempt it. Laws against “crimethink,” often transformed into the less Newspeak-like “thoughtcrime,” are worst in totalitarian states but can come out of any legislative body. All of these practices can be called Orwellian.

“Kafkaesque” refers to situations like what Josef K. encounters in Der Prozess (called The Trial in English, though it isn’t about a court trial). He faces repeated questioning and has strange encounters, though neither he nor the reader is told why. The term often refers to organizations or systems which make no sense. Merriam-Webster gives a broader definition, “having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.” His “Metamorphosis” fits that characterization, presenting a man who has inexplicably turned into a giant bug, retaining his mental faculties but not his ability to communicate. A student who can’t make sense of a language’s grammar might think of it as Kafkaesque.

For another view of adjectives of this kind, including “Orwellian” and “Kafkaesque,” take a look at “8 Authors Who Became Adjectives” by Scotty Hendricks. Hendricks favors narrow interpretations of the adjectives, giving them more precision, but if an adjective captures something that the corresponding author focused on, can we say it’s wrong?