In Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the fictional teenage slang language is called Nadsat.
Nadsat is used by Alex and his friends throughout the novel. Burgess built it mainly from Russian-derived vocabulary mixed with English slang, giving familiar scenes an unsettling distance. Words such as “droog,” meaning friend, and “moloko,” meaning milk, are examples of the invented vocabulary.
The language shapes how readers experience Alex’s violence and self-justification. Because many terms are initially unfamiliar, the prose can make brutal acts feel strangely abstract before their meanings become clear from context. The slang also marks a generational and cultural divide.
Burgess published the novel in 1962. Its title comes from Anthony Burgess’s interpretation of the phrase “a clockwork orange,” suggesting something organic that has been turned into a mechanical instrument. The novel’s Nadsat is sometimes confused with Newspeak, but Newspeak is the controlled language in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.