The term “langue de bois” (literally “tongue of wood”) is highly polysemic in French and has no single translation in English. The term appeared in France in the 1980s as a borrowing from the Russian, possibly via Poland at the time of the events in Gdansk and the movement started by the Solidarność trade union. How did a term used to describe the language of a totalitarian state, coined by George Orwell as “newspeak,” come to be used in so many different ways? Orwell himself provides the explanation: in a celebrated article on the language of politics, he argues that subverting the truth is not an exclusive mark of totalitarian regimes. Today, we have a form of expression known as “straight talk,” which, when it comes out of the mouths of spin doctors, could well be seen as the latest incarnation of newspeak.