telescreen
noun
telescreen is a noun meaning “A screen for broadcasting television or similar media, especially one that shows propaganda and records or spies on the user” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled T-E-L-E-S-C-R-E-E-N, and it appears about once in every 54 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of telescreen is telescreens.
What does telescreen mean?
noun
- 1
A screen for broadcasting television or similar media, especially one that shows propaganda and records or spies on the user.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of telescreen
- telescreens plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is telescreen?
Telescreen appears about once in every 54 million words in written English, the 228,409th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Telescreen in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense screen for broadcasting:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | télécran |
| Portuguese | teletela |
| Spanish | telepantalla |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does telescreen come from?
From tele- + screen, from television. Popularized by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), in which they are used for government surveillance of citizens.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).