The phrase “As queer as a clockwork orange,” which inspired the title of Anthony Burgess' famous novel, is first of all “good old East-London slang,” as the author explains in an interview conducted after the success of Stanley Kubrick's film based on his novel. (If you've missed it, you can find it here!).
Intending to bring together “the organic, the lively, the sweet, in other words 'life' – the orange –, and the mechanical, the cold, the discipline,” the writer added “an extra meaning” to it, thereby giving life to a “sour-sweet word.”
“Anybody who knows cockney slang would know the term, anybody who doesn't can give a meaning to it,” comments Burgess. In the same way, the writer crafts new meanings for his novel by giving to some Russian words “a Joycean* twist into English.”
The Nadsat Language is Burgess' creation for his “little squib of a book”
* Burgess was a renown Joyce scholar and Joyce passionate.
Glossary of Nadsat Language
*appy polly loggy – apology
baboochka – old woman
*baddiwad – bad
banda – band
bezoomny – mad
biblio – library
bitva – battle
Bog – God
bolnoy – sick
bolshy – big, great
brat, bratty –