Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [471]

A thing that astonished him about her was the coarseness of her language. Party members were supposed not to swear, and Winston himself very seldom did swear, aloud, at any rate. Julia, however, seemed unable to mention the Party, and especially the Inner Party, without using the kind of words that you saw chalked up in dripping alleyways. He did not dislike it. It was merely one symptom of her revolt against the Party and all its ways, and somehow it seemed natural and healthy, like the sneeze of a horse that smells bad hay. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 471

Note

The ‘sneeze of a horse that smells bad hay’ — a physical, involuntary, healthy expelling — captures Julia’s swearing as organic resistance, the body rejecting the Party’s feed. The phrase ‘aloud, at any rate’ quietly admits Winston’s inner profanity, marking the gap between his mental and verbal worlds.