big brother
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.00 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Unwarranted, invasive, and discreet surveillance, especially of a people by its government.
noun
A sibling's older brother.
noun
Something that is bigger in comparison.
noun
early mobile phones (in China)
noun
Alternative form of Big Brother.
Example Sentences
- "Some people are worried about marketing calls at dinnertime or junk mail or spam, while others are more concerned about Big Brother."
- "When one mentions the concepts of identity and governance in the same breath, a virtually autonomic response from many is the concern that a governmental big brother will soon be looking over their shoulders."
- "Holonym: the System"
- "In the late 1960s and early 1970s, at the height of public concern over the emergence of a Big Brother society, privacy activism shared features in common with some of the hard-line environmental campaigns of the 1990s."
- "When the agencies of the federal government spied on the political activities of US citizens, they moved into the grey area between concern with national security and a Big Brother system that violated constitutional protections."
- "If you don't give me back my toys I'll tell my big brother!"
Etymology
After the nominal leader of Oceania in the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by British writer and journalist George Orwell.