The 420 Words That Shakespeare Invented - The LitCharts Blog (2023)

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The 420 Words That Shakespeare Invented - The LitCharts Blog? ›

William Shakespeare is credited with the invention or introduction of over 1,700 words that are still used in English today. William Shakespeare used more than 20,000 words in his plays and poems, and his works provide the first recorded use of over 1,700 words in the English language.

William Shakespeare is credited with the invention or introduction of over 1,700 words that are still used in English today. William Shakespeare used more than 20,000 words in his plays and poems, and his works provide the first recorded use of over 1,700 words in the English language.

The word “swagger” first appeared in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was probably a variation on the Middle English verb “swag” meaning “to sway.” Shakespeare used the first recorded instance of the phrase “one fell swoop” in Macbeth.

Some of the D words for kids are dig, door, date, drink, dinosaur, deer, desk, donkey, dart, deep, dance, duck, dip, dab, den, dad, dent, dock, dark, dust, etc.

The longest word used by. Shakespeare in any of his plays. ...

He wrote 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and a couple of epic narrative poems. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, he coined 3,000 new words, and he has contributed more phrases and sayings to the English language than any other individual.

Many of the words Shakespeare invented or coined are still in common use today. The masterful storyteller had so much to express that he needed to push the boundaries of the English vocabulary as he knew it.

By oral tradition, it was reported that Shakespeare poached deer from Sir Thomas Lucy's estate, the nearby Charlecote Park. It was said that he fled to London in order to escape punishment.

Why did Shakespeare just invent words? ›

he needed a word to have a certain number of syllables to fit the meter requirements of a line; normally the word had to naturally be spoken with an iambic rhythm; and. there existed no dictionaries or thesauruses for him to search for known words.

1. "Uncomfortable" Shakespeare was very fond of creating new words by attaching prefixes or suffixes to existing phrases. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare popped 'un' in front of 'comfortable' to create a word that's now used everyday by people around the world.

Entries linking to shakespeare

This is reconstructed to be from Proto-Germanic *skakanan "to shake, swing," also "to escape" (source also of Old Norse, Swedish skaka, Danish skage "to shift, turn, veer").

Iago warns Othello of jealousy, referring, "It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on." The term refers back to Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice where he first personifies jealousy with his use of the phrase "green-eyed jealousy," from which the term "green - eyed monster" gets its ...

"To be, or not to be: that is the question." Perhaps the most famous of Shakespearean lines, the anguished Hamlet ponders the purpose of life and suicide in this profound soliloquy.

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

Shakespeare did not coin phrases such as “it's Greek to me” and “a wild goose chase”, according to an Australian academic.

What is the longest insulting word? ›

Floccinaucinihilipilification Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com.

What is Shakespeare's shortest play? The Comedy of Errors, with 1,898 lines, according to the line count for the Folger Shakespeare edition of the play.

The longest play is Hamlet, which is the only Shakespeare play with more than thirty thousand words, and the shortest is The Comedy of Errors, which is the only play with fewer than fifteen thousand words. Shakespeare's 37 plays have an average word count of 22.6 thousand words per play.

Next time you're reading a book on Playster in bed, give a thought to Shakespeare, who created the word “bedroom” especially for A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Most adult native test-takers range from 20,000–35,000 words. Average native test-takers of age 8 already know 10,000 words. Average native test-takers of age 4 already know 5,000 words. Adult native test-takers learn almost 1 new word a day until middle age.

The English Dictionary

First, let's look at how many words are in the Dictionary. The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use (and 47,156 obsolete words).

Shakespeare was a man known for his quick wit and creativity and his insults were creative even for his time, and as such, they became an important element of his plays. The Shakespearean insult was created to add elements of comedy and relatability to his performance.

The grave, where the playwright was buried in 1616, carries the warning: "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forebeare, To digg the dust enclosed heare; Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, And curst be he that moves my bones."

From 1585 until 1592, very little is known about Shakespeare. These are generally referred to as 'The Lost Years'. But by 1592 we know that he was in London where he was singled out by a rival dramatist, Robert Greene in his bitter deathbed pamphlet, A Groats-worth of Witte.

What is a rare fact about William Shakespeare? ›

Shakespeare lived through and survived a pandemic, one of a number of waves of the bubonic plague. Very sadly, however, his son Hamnet died of the plague, aged just 11. This affected William's writing and themes like disease, death and grief ran through many of his plays.

Nobody knows what Shakespeare did between 1585 and 1592.

Historians have speculated that he worked as a schoolteacher, studied law, traveled across continental Europe or joined an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford.

When William Shakespeare died he famously left his wife Anne only one thing: their 'second best bed'.

His themes are timeless

Shakespeare's works have strong themes that run through each piece. And again, these themes are still relevant today – love, death, ambition, power, fate, free will, just to name a few. So Shakespeare's works are timeless and universal. That also makes them relatable.

William Shakespeare might have left London and stopped writing three years before he died because he had lost his sight, a playwright has suggested. Rick Thomas said he thought years of writing by candlelight would have left Shakespeare struggling to see....

No single writer has done more to change and shape the English language than Shakespeare. As a mark of his lasting legacy and talent as a playwright, many of the words and phrases he came up with are still in common use today.

Oxford Dictionary has 273,000 headwords; 171,476 of them being in current use, 47,156 being obsolete words and around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries.

Given those stats, you'd be forgiven for thinking "swagger" is a relatively new concept, but it can be traced all the way back to Elizabethan England. As with so many other famous words and phrases, the first writer to use it was William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's earliest poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, were probably composed when the theatres were closed because of the plague.

It's a famous line, and it's also the last line that Richard III speaks. “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” A titanic villain in Shakespeare's history plays, Richard III departs the stage and this life with these words, fighting to his death on foot after losing his horse in battle.

How many manuscripts of Shakespeare's have survived? ›

107 manuscripts that refer to William Shakespeare by name in his lifetime (spelled in many different ways, which was typical of the period), including four manuscripts signed by him, and one letter addressed to him.

William Shakespeare is credited with the invention or introduction of over 1,700 words that are still used in English today. William Shakespeare used more than 20,000 words in his plays and poems, and his works provide the first recorded use of over 1,700 words in the English language.

In 1986 McCrum et al. said this to a Public Broadcasting System audience of millions: Shakespeare had one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, some 30,000 words. (Estimates of an educated person's vocabulary today vary, but it is probably about half this, 15,000)' (2002 [1986], 102).

Unreal. It may seem 'unreal', but Shakespeare also came up with the word that we now use to mean 'cool' or, in some cases, 'unbelievable'. However, in his day, 'unreal' simply meant just that, 'not real'.

Green irises have an uncommon melanin level — less than “truly” brown eyes, but more than blue eyes. This is why green eyes are so unique. And while 9% is indeed rare, green eyes have an even lower eye color percentage across the globe.

So when he says "O beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meet it feeds on," what he's actually saying is "I hope you become jealous and kill your wife, because that would, ironically, fulfill all my plans.

Iago says (I. 1, 65) "I am not what I am," which can be interpreted as "I am not what I seem." But it is also reminiscent of a quotation from the Bible which Shakespeare would have known: In Exodus, God gives his laws to Moses on Mt.

1. “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” 2. “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

One person who most assuredly did not write the KJV, although he had been long rumored to have done so, is William Shakespeare.

While the coincidence is tantalizing, there is no factual data that supports Shakespeare as a translator of the KJV. William Shakespeare's religious affiliation is an ongoing debate among scholars. It has long been argued that he was a Roman Catholic and there is some evidence to support the possibility.

What is Shakespeare's one meaningful quote? ›

And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.

While honorificabilitudinitatibus was not included in Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary, Dr Johnson did comment on its length in his 1765 edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare: This word, whencesoever it comes, is often mentioned as the longest word known.

Book details

The Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary is the first of its kind, a brand new illustrated alphabetical dictionary of all the words and meanings students of Shakespeare need to know.

Aramaic is best known as the language Jesus spoke. It is a Semitic language originating in the middle Euphrates. In 800-600 BC it spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia. The oldest preserved inscriptions are from this period and written in Old Aramaic.

The 46th word from the beginning of Psalm 46 is "shake" and the 46th word from the end (omitting the liturgical mark "Selah") is "spear" ("speare" in the original spelling).

There are many Biblical references in Shakespeare's plays – some obvious, some more subtle. Most scholars agree that the Geneva Bible is the one he used most, because his wording is often closest to this text.

Who wrote this book? The epistle states that it was authored by “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1). Christian tradition has held that this James, like Jude, is one of the sons of Joseph and Mary and hence a half brother of Jesus Christ (see Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3; Galatians 1:19).

Codex Leningradensis is the oldest Hebrew manuscript of the entire Old Testament. This codex was found in Egypt and is now at The National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg (formerly known as Leningrad).

Each cut had a purpose, and each word was carefully considered. As he worked, Thomas Jefferson pasted his selections—each in a variety of ancient and modern languages that reflected his vast learning—into the book in neat columns. Thomas Jefferson was known as an inventor and tinkerer.

Many of the words Shakespeare invented or coined are still in common use today. The masterful storyteller had so much to express that he needed to push the boundaries of the English vocabulary as he knew it. Some of the most surprisingly common words Shakespeare invented are: bedroom.

Who first invented words? ›

The general consensus is that Sumerian was the first written language, developed in southern Mesopotamia around 3400 or 3500 BCE. At first, the Sumerians would make small tokens out of clay representing goods they were trading. Later, they began to write these symbols on clay tablets.

Bedazzle. Definition: to thrill or excite (someone) very much. More words and phrases coined by the Bard … ” Bedazzled” – The Taming of the Shrew.