Inventors get a lot of love. Thomas Edison is held up as a tinkering genius. Steve Jobs is considered a saint in Silicon Valley. Hedy Lamar, meanwhile, may have been a Hollywood star but a new book makes clear her real legacy is in inventing the foundations of encryption. But while all these people invented things, it’s possible to invent something even more fundamental. Take Shakespeare: he invented words. And he invented more words—words that continue to shape the English language—than anyone else. By a long shot.

But what does it mean to “invent” words? How many words did Shakespeare invent? What kind of words? And which words are those exactly? Rather than just listing all the words Shakespeare invented, this post digs deeper into the how and the why (or “wherefore”) of Shakespeare’s literary creations.

How Many Words Did Shakespeare Invent?

1700! My, what a perfectly round number! Such a large and perfectly round number is misleading at best, and is more likely just wrong—there is in fact a bunch of debate about the accuracy of this number.

So who’s to blame for the uncertainty around the number of words Shakespeare invented? For starters, we can blame the Oxford English Dictionary. This famous dictionary (often called the OED for short) is famous, in part, because it provides incredibly thorough definitions of words, but also because it identifies the first time each word actually appeared in written English. Shakespeare appears as the first documented user of more words than any other writer, making it convenient to assume that he was the creator of all of those words.

In reality, though, many of these words were probably part of everyday discourse in Elizabethan England. So it’s highly likely that Shakespeare didn’t invent all of these words; he just produced the first preserved record of some of them. Ryan Buda, a writer at Letterpile, explains it like this:

But most likely, the word was in use for some time before it is seen in the writings of Shakespeare. The fact that the word first appears there does not necessarily mean that he made it up himself, but rather, he could have borrowed it from his peers or from conversations he had with others.

However, while Shakespeare might have been just the first person to write down some words, he definitely did create many words himself, plenty of which we still use to this day. The list a ways down below contains the 422 words that almost certainly originated from Shakespeare himself.

But all this leads to another question. What does it even mean to “invent” a word?

How Did Shakespeare Invent Words?

Some writers invent words in the same way Thomas Edison invented light bulbs: they cobble together bits of sound and create entirely new words without any meaning or relation to existing words. Lewis Carroll does in the first stanza of his “Jabberwocky” poem:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Carroll totally made up words like “brillig,” “slithy,” “toves,” and “mimsy”; the first stanza alone contains 11 of these made-up words, which are known as nonce words. Words like these aren’t just meaningless, they’re also disposable, intended to be used just once.

Shakespeare did not create nonce words. He took an entirely different approach. When he invented words, he did it by working with existing words and altering them in new ways. More specifically, he would create new words by:

Conjoining two words

Changing verbs into adjectives

Changing nouns into verbs

Adding prefixes to words

Adding suffixes to words

The most exhaustive take on Shakespeare’s invented words comes from a nice little 874-page book entitled The Shakespeare Key by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke. Here’s how they explain Shakespeare’s literary innovations:

Shakespeare, with the right and might of a true poet, and with his peculiar royal privilege as king of all poets, has minted several words that deserve to become current in our language. He coined them for his own special use to express his own special meanings in his own special passages; but they are so expressive and so well framed to be exponents of certain particulars in meanings common to us all, that they deserve to become generally adopted and used.

We can call what Shakespeare did to create new words “minting,” “coining” or “inventing.” Whatever term we use to describe it, Shakespeare was doing things with words that no one had ever thought to do before, and that’s what matters.

Shakespeare Didn’t Invent Nonsense Words

Though today readers often need the help of modern English translations to fully grasp the nuance and meaning of Shakespeare’s language, Shakespeare’s contemporary audience would have had a much easier go of it. Why? Two main reasons.

First, Shakespeare was part of a movement in English literature that introduced more prose into plays. (Earlier plays were written primarily in rhyming verse.) Shakespeare’s prose was similar to the style and cadence of everyday conversation in Elizabethan England, making it natural for members of his audience to understand.

In addition, the words he created were comprehensible intuitively because, once again, they were often built on the foundations of already existing words, and were not just unintelligible combinations of sound. Take “congreeted” for example. The prefix “con” means with, and “greet” means to receive or acknowledge someone.

It therefore wasn’t a huge stretch for people to understand this line:

That, face to face and royal eye to eye.

You have congreeted. (Henry V, Act 5, Scene 2)

Shakespeare also made nouns into verbs. He was the first person to use friend as a verb, predating Mark Zuckerberg by about 395 years.

And what so poor a man as Hamlet is

May do, to express his love and friending to you (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5)

Other times, despite his proclivity for making compound words, Shakespeare reached into his vast Latin vocabulary for loanwords.

His heart fracted and corroborate. (Henry V, Act 2, Scene 1)

Here the Latin word fractus means “broken.” Take away the –us and add in the English suffix –ed, and a new English word is born.

New Words Are Nothing New

Shakespeare certainly wasn’t the first person to make up words. It’s actually entirely commonplace for new words to enter a language. We’re adding new words and terms to our “official” dictionaries every year. In the past few years, the Merriam-Webster dictionary has added several new words and phrases, like these:

bokeh

elderflower

fast fashion

first world problem

ginger

microaggression

mumblecore

pareidolia

ping

safe space

wayback

wayback machine

woo-woo

So inventing words wasn’t something unique to Shakespeare or Elizabethan England. It’s still going on all the time.

But Shakespeare Invented a Lot of New Words

So why did Shakespeare have to make up hundreds of new words? For starters, English was smaller in Shakespeare’s time. The language contained many fewer words, and not enough for a literary genius like Shakespeare. How many words? No one can be sure. One estimates, one from Encyclopedia Americana, puts the number at 50,000-60,000, likely not including medical and scientific terms.

During Shakespeare’s time, the number of words in the language began to grow. Edmund Weiner, deputy chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, explains it this way:

The vocabulary of English expanded greatly during the early modern period. Writers were well aware of this and argued about it. Some were in favour of loanwords to express new concepts, especially from Latin. Others advocated the use of existing English words, or new compounds of them, for this purpose. Others advocated the revival of obsolete words and the adoption of regional dialect.

In Shakespeare’s collected writings, he used a total of 31,534 different words. Whatever the size of the English lexicon at the time, Shakespeare was in command of a substantial portion of it. Jason Kottke estimates that Shakespeare knew around 66,534 words, which suggests Shakespeare was pushing the boundaries of English vocab as he knew it. He had to make up some new words.

The Complete List of Words Shakespeare Invented

Compiling a definitive list of every word that Shakespeare ever invented is impossible. But creating a list of the words that Shakespeare almost certainly invented can be done. We generated list of words below by starting with the words that Shakespeare was the first to use in written language, and then applying research that has identified which words were probably in everyday use during Shakespeare’s time. The result are 422 bona fide words minted, coined, and invented by Shakespeare, from “academe” to “zany”:

academe accessible accommodation addiction admirable aerial airless amazement anchovy arch-villain auspicious bacheolorship barefaced baseless batty beachy bedroom belongings birthplace black-faced bloodstained bloodsucking blusterer bodikins braggartism brisky broomstaff budger bump buzzer candle holder catlike characterless cheap chimney-top chopped churchlike circumstantial clangor cold-blooded coldhearted compact consanguineous control coppernose countless courtship critical cruelhearted Dalmatian dauntless dawn day’s work deaths-head defeat depositary dewdrop dexterously disgraceful distasteful distrustful dog-weary doit (a Dutch coin: ‘a pittance’) domineering downstairs dwindle East Indies embrace employer employment enfranchisement engagement enrapt epileptic equivocal eventful excitement expedience expertness exposure eyedrop eyewink fair-faced fairyland fanged fap far-off farmhouse fashionable fashionmonger fat-witted fathomless featureless fiendlike fitful fixture fleshment flirt-gill flowery fly-bitten footfall foppish foregone fortune-teller foul mouthed Franciscan freezing fretful full-grown fullhearted futurity gallantry garden house generous gentlefolk glow go-between grass plot gravel-blind gray-eyed green-eyed grief-shot grime gust half-blooded heartsore hedge-pig hell-born hint hobnail homely honey-tongued hornbook hostile hot-blooded howl hunchbacked hurly idle-headed ill-tempered ill-used impartial imploratory import in question inauspicious indirection indistinguishable inducement informal inventorially investment invitation invulnerable jaded juiced keech kickie-wickie kitchen-wench lackluster ladybird lament land-rat laughable leaky leapfrog lewdster loggerhead lonely long-legged love letter lustihood lustrous madcap madwoman majestic malignancy manager marketable marriage bed militarist mimic misgiving misquote mockable money’s worth monumental moonbeam mortifying motionless mountaineer multitudinous neglect never-ending newsmonger nimble-footed noiseless nook-shotten obscene ode offenseful offenseless Olympian on purpose oppugnancy outbreak overblown overcredulous overgrowth overview pageantry pale-faced passado paternal pebbled pedant pedantical pendulous pignut pious please-man plumpy posture prayerbook priceless profitless Promethean protester published puking (disputed) puppy-dog pushpin quarrelsome radiance rascally rawboned reclusive refractory reinforcement reliance remorseless reprieve resolve restoration restraint retirement revokement revolting ring carrier roadway roguery rose-cheeked rose-lipped rumination ruttish sanctimonious satisfying savage savagery schoolboy scrimer scrubbed scuffle seamy self-abuse shipwrecked shooting star shudder silk stocking silliness skim milk skimble-skamble slugabed soft-hearted spectacled spilth spleenful sportive stealthy stillborn successful suffocating tanling tardiness time-honored title page to arouse to barber to bedabble to belly to besmirch to bet to bethump to blanket to cake to canopy to castigate to cater to champion to comply to compromise to cow to cudgel to dapple to denote to dishearten to dislocate to educate to elbow to enmesh to enthrone to fishify to glutton to gnarl to gossip to grovel to happy to hinge to humor to impede to inhearse to inlay to instate to lapse to muddy to negotiate to numb to offcap to operate to out-Herod to out-talk to out-villain to outdare to outfrown to outscold to outsell to outweigh to overpay to overpower to overrate to palate to pander to perplex to petition to rant to reverb to reword to rival to sate to secure to sire to sneak to squabble to subcontract to sully to supervise to swagger to torture to un muzzle to unbosom to uncurl to undervalue to undress to unfool to unhappy to unsex to widen tortive traditional tranquil transcendence trippingly unaccommodated unappeased unchanging unclaimed unearthy uneducated unfrequented ungoverned ungrown unhelpful unhidden unlicensed unmitigated unmusical unpolluted unpublished unquestionable unquestioned unreal unrivaled unscarred unscratched unsolicited unsolicited unsullied unswayed untutored unvarnished unvarnished unwillingness upstairs useful useless valueless varied varletry vasty vulnerable watchdog water drop water fly well-behaved well-bred well-educated well-read wittolly worn out wry-necked yelping zany

Words That Shakespeare Invented – Resource List

Words, words, words.

(Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2)