Nadsat is the fictional slang language spoken by Alex and his friends in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
Anthony Burgess created Nadsat for his 1962 novel, blending English with Russian-derived words and other slang influences. Kubrick retained the vocabulary in his 1971 film, allowing Alex’s speech to sound stylish, playful, and alienating at the same time.
Words such as “droog,” meaning friend, and “moloko,” referring to milk, are among the film’s best-known examples. The language helps establish Alex’s identity and makes his narration feel separate from ordinary adult society.
Nadsat is not a fully independent language with a complete grammar. It is primarily a slang vocabulary layered onto English syntax. Viewers sometimes confuse it with Newspeak from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, but Newspeak belongs to a different fictional world and serves a different political purpose.