



Of the nearly 18,000 written words in Shakespeare’s oeuvre, over 1,700 are seen for the first time in his works. This doesn’t necessarily mean he coined all those words — and in fact many of them most likely existed in other languages, like Latin, for a very long time before Shakespeare anglicized them.

New words are known as neologisms, and the coining of new words or adopting words from other languages and making them, in essence, your own is called neologizing. Shakespeare was a master neologist.

The word “eyeballs,” for instance, made its first appearance in the English language when Shakespeare wrote:

Then crush this herb into Lysander’s eye;

Whose liquor hath this virtuous property,

To take from thence all error with his might,

And make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight. (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii)

And the word “puking”:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. (As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii)

The following — an astounding and by-no-means exhaustive list — are words that according to the Oxford English Dictionary Shakespeare was the first to put in print:

addiction

admirable

advertising

aerial

alligator

amazement

arch-villain

assassination

barefaced

bedroom

belongings

bloodstained

bump

buzzer

cold-blooded

coldhearted

clangor

compact

critical

controls

critic

critical

dawn

disgraceful

dishearten

distasteful

embrace

employer

employment

excitement

eyesore

farmhouse

fathomless

flawed

fortuneteller

foulmouthed

frugal

gloomy

glow

gnarled

hurry

jaded

kissing

lackluster

laughable

leaky

leapfrog

lonely

long-legged

love letter

luggage

lustrous

madcap

majestic

malignancy

manager

marketable

mimic

misgiving

misplaced

monumental

moonbeam

mortifying

motionless

multitudinous

neglect

new-fangled

nimble-footed

noiseless

numb

obscene

obsequiously

outbreak

perplex

posture

premeditated

priceless

Promethean

protester

published

puking

radiance

rant

rancorous

reclusive

reliance

remorseless

reprieve

resolve

restraint

retirement

revolting

rival

roadway

rumination

sanctimonious

satisfying

savage

scrubbed

shooting star

seamy-side

shudder

silk

stocking

zany

In addition to that, did you know that Shakespeare coined these female names: Olivia, Jessica, Miranda, and Imogen?

And people have the nerve to ask me if “Shakespeare is all that”?







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