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How Shakespeare Influences the Way We Speak Now

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How Shakespeare Influences the Way We Speak Now

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I don't know much about Shakespeare but after reading this article I learned that he has created most of the phrases we use today and also words that he invinted himself although we didn't have a long life his words and work are still used commonly. Shakespeares word impacted so many people's lives everyone quotes him without even knowing they're quoting him without Shakespeare our literature would be so much different

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If you missed Shakespeare's 450th birthday, you can be sure he'd have had a zinger of a putdown to sling your way. Or better yet, a whole string of them. "Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood" might just do it, borrowed from King Lear railing against his daughter, Goneril. Or perhaps he'd settle for more aloof damnation, along the lines of Orlando's insult to Jaques in As You Like It: "I do desire we may be better strangers."

That isn't a wish likely to be granted to Shakespeare any time soon. Yes, his 450th birthday has been and gone already, but it's worth noting that all over the world, people paused to acknowledge it in the first place. In fact, during his 52 years on earth, he enriched the English language in ways so profound it's almost impossible to fully gauge his impact. Without him, our vocabulary would be just too different. He gave us uniquely vivid ways in which to express hope and despair, sorrow and rage, love and lust. Even if you've never read one of his sonnets or seen a play - even if you've never so much as watched a movie adaptation - you're likely to have quoted him unwittingly. It's almost impossible to avoid.

Of course, fellow artists readily draw on him for paintings, operas and ballets. Shakespeare's influence is evident in popular as well as high culture: singer-songwriter Nick Lowe's 1970s earworm, Cruel to be Kind, took its title from lines Hamlet addressed to his mother. "I must be cruel only to be kind," the Prince of Denmark tells her in a wriggling kind of apology for killing a courtier and meddling in her new relationship. Hamlet also yielded the title of Agatha Christie's theatrical smash, The Mousetrap, and Alfred Hitchcock's evocative spy thriller, North by Northwest. And then there's David Foster Wallace's iconic novel, Infinite Jest, Ruth Rendell's Put on by Cunning, Philip K. Dick's Time Out of Joint and Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten. That one play alone has inspired other writers in numerous genres, at far-flung ends of the literary spectrum.

And what of Shakespeare's other plays? Well, when Mumford and Sons named their album Sigh No More, they were borrowing a phrase from Much Ado About Nothing. As for Iron Maiden's song Where Eagles Dare, how many of their fans recognise it as a quote from Richard III?
Famous phrases
These catchy titles barely gesture to Shakespeare's influence on the minutiae of our lives. If you've ever been 'in a pickle', waited 'with bated breath', or gone on 'a wild goose chase', you've been quoting from The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet respectively.

Next time you refer to jealousy as "the green-eyed monster," know that you're quoting Othello's arch villain, Iago. (Shakespeare was almost self-quoting here, having first touched on green as the colour of envy in The Merchant of Venice, where Portia alludes to "green-eyed jealousy.")

Allow yourself to "gossip" (A Midsummer Night's Dream), and you're quoting him. "The be-all and end-all" is uttered by Macbeth as he murderously contemplates King Duncan, and "fair play" falls from Miranda's lips in The Tempest. And did I mention that he invented the knock-knock joke in the Scottish play?

Some phrases have become so well used that they're now regarded as clichés - surely a compliment for an author so long gone. "A heart of gold"? You'll find it in Henry V, while "the world's mine oyster" crops up in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Life imitates art
His impact endures not only in the way we express ourselves, but how we experience and process the world around us. Had Shakespeare not given us the words, would we truly feel "bedazzled" (The Taming of the Shrew)? Had he not taught us the word "gloomy" (Titus Andronicus), would it be a feeling we recognised in ourselves? And could we "grovel" effectively (Henry VI, Part II) or be properly "sanctimonious" (The Tempest) had he not shown us how?

Victorian word expert F Max Muller estimated that Shakespeare used 15,000 words in his plays, a portion of which he invented himself by merging existing words and anglicising vocabulary from foreign languages. By contrast, Milton used a mere 8,000 and the Old Testament is made up of 5,642. Meanwhile, an unschooled agricultural worker of the day would have said all that he had to say in fewer than 300 words.

Recently, two antiquarian booksellers in the US declared that they'd found a book they believe to be Shakespeare's dictionary. The book, which was on eBay, was a copy of John Baret's Alvearie, a popular late-16th-Century dictionary in four languages. It's densely annotated throughout but the clincher, they believe, is the handwritten 'word salad' on the tome's blank back page, a sheet filled with a mix of French and English words, some of which ended up in Shakespeare's plays.

Scholars have argued back and forth over just how many of these words and phrases Shakespeare actually coined, and how many he merely popularised by bedding them down in a memorable plot. In the past few years, quantitative analysis and digital databases have allowed computers to simultaneously search thousands of texts, leading scholars to believe that we may have overestimated his contribution to the English language.

According to a 2011 paper by Ward EY Elliott and Robert J Valenza of America's Claremont McKenna College, new words attributed to Shakespeare have probably been over-counted by a factor of at least two. The OED is coming to reflect this: in the 1950s, Shakespeare's tally of first-use citations stood at 3,200. Today, it's around 2,000.

In some ways, this makes Shakespeare's flair and originality all the more impressive. His linguistic arsenal didn't contain vastly more than those of his contemporaries, and yet his are the stories we remember. Not that 2,000 is bad going, especially when so many of those words saturate our everyday speech.

How did he manage it, you might wonder? It's partly his turn of phrase. Would "fashionable" have caught on had not set it in such a wry sentence as this in Troilus and Cressida? "For time is like a fashionable host, that slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand." Then there's the fact that these words are voiced by some unforgettable characters - men and women who, despite the extraordinary situations in which they tend to find themselves, are fully and profoundly human in both their strengths and frailties. It's little wonder that critic Harold Bloom titled his 1998 book on the man Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.

If the mark of a great writer is that they're still read, then perhaps the mark of a genius is that they're still spoken, too.
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How Shakespeare influences the way we speak now

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If you missed Shakespeare's 450th birthday, you can be sure he'd have had a zinger of a putdown to sling your way. Or better yet, a whole string of them. "Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle in my corrupted blood" might just do it, borrowed from King Lear railing against his daughter, Goneril.

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For lots of people who speak english some of the phrases shakespeare created are familiar enough to be considered common expressions in the english language. All of the phrases in this article shakespeare created.

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NOTE: This list (including some of the errors I originally made) is found in several other places online. That's fine, but I've asked that folks who want this on their own sites mention that I am the original compiler.

For many English-speakers, the following phrases are familiar enough to be considered common expressions, proverbs, and/or clichés. All of them originated with or were popularized by Shakespeare.

I compiled these from multiple sources online in 2003. Each of these words and compounds supposedly is not known to have appeared in print prior to the publication of Shakespeare's works. For this reason, people claim that Shakespeare invented these words.

How many of these are true coinages by "the Bard", and how many are simply the earliest written attestations of a word or words already in use, I can't tell you. The ones that seem real are new forms of words already in the language. Words like "advertising", "assassination", "bedazzled", "consanguineous", "dishearten", "enmesh", "eventful", "eyesore", "lackluster", "moonbeam", outbreak", "quarrelsome", "radiance", "reclusive", "seamy-side", "stealthy", "submerge", "time-honored", "undervalued", "unmitigated", "unreal", "well-read", "watchdog", and "whirligig" would have been meaningful to the audience.

A few words are first attested in Shakespeare and seem to have caused extra problems for the typesetters. This suggests they are really coined by Shakespeare. One example is "denote".

The popular book Coined by Shakespeare acknowledges that it is presenting first attestations rather than certain inventions. For example, "alligator" appeared for the first time in print as an English word in "Romeo and Juliet", but it has Spanish antecedents, and only the terminal "-r" seems to be new with Shakespeare. "Puke" appears as a vulgar term for vomiting in the near-contemporary "Duchess of Malfi", and it seems well-known; so Shakespeare's use in "As You Like It" seems more likely just a first attestation. The region of Dalmatia is as old as the Roman Empire, and obviously Shakespeare did not coin the adjectival form.

Words like "anchovy", "bandit", and "zany" are just first attestations of loan-words. By contrast, in "Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare seems to have been having fun introducing new forms of old words, even though "orgulous" and "deracinate" never did catch on.

Right now I'm in the process of referencing these. I would like to hear from anyone who knows for certain about any item on this page.

I stand corrected; one of my sources misattributed "fool's paradise" to Romeo and Juliet though it appears in Tyndale's Bible and probably earlier.

abstemious (The Tempest -- a Latin word that meant "to abstain from alcoholic drink" was generalized to sexual behavior as well)

academe (Love's Labour's Lost; this is just an English form of "Academy", the Greek for Plato's grove)

accommodation (Othello)

accused (n.) (Richard II -- first known use as a noun, meaning person accused of a crime)

addiction (Henry V / Othello)

admirable (several; seems unlikely)

advertising (adj.)(Measure for Measure; in context, means "being attentive"; the noun was already in use)

aerial (Othello)

alligator (Romeo and Juliet; Spanish "aligarto" was already in use in English)

amazement (13 instances; first known use as a noun)

anchovy (I Henry IV; first attestation in English of the Spanish word for dried edible fish)

apostrophe ("apostrophas")(Love's Labour's Lost; seems to be a well-known word already)

arch-villain (Measure for Measure / Timon of Athens)

to arouse (2 Henry VI / Hamlet; "rouse" was the usual form)

assassination (Macbeth; "assassin" was already in use and derives from "hashish eater")

auspicious (several; "auspice" was a Roman practice of fortune-telling by bird flight)

bachelorship (I Henry VI)

backing (I Henry VI; this is just a pun on a known word)

bandit (II Henry VI, actually "bandetto", the first attestation in English of a familiar Italian word for people "banned", i.e., outlaws)

barefaced (in the sense of "barefaced power") (Macbeth)

baseless (in the sense of fantasy without grounding in fact) (The Tempest)

beached (several, merely means "possessing a beach")

bedazzled (The Taming of the Shrew)

bedroom (A Midsummer Night's Dream, merely means a place to sleep on the ground)

belongings (Measure for Measure)

to besmirch (Henry V)

birthplace (Coriolanus; first attestation)

to blanket (King Lear; first use as a verb)

bloodstained (I Henry IV)

blusterer (A Lover's Complaint)

bold-faced (I Henry VI)

bottled (Richard III)

bump (Romeo and Juliet; first attestation of onomopoeic word)

buzzer (Hamlet; means gossipper)

to cake (Timon of Athens, first attestation as a verb)

to castigate (Timon of Athens)

to cater (As You Like It; from coetous, a buyer of provisions)

clangor (3 Henry VI / 2 Henry IV)

to champion (Macbeth; first attestation as a verb, and in an older sense of "to challenge"; though the noun was familiar as someone who would fight for another)

circumstantial (As You Like It / Cymbeline; first attestation in the sense of "indirect")

cold-blooded (King John; first use to mean "lack of emotion")

coldhearted (Antony and Cleopatra)

compact (several; seems to have been a common word)

to comply (Othello)

to compromise (The Merchant of Venice, several of the histories; seems to have been already in use)

to cow (Macbeth; first use in English of a Scandinavian verb)

consanguineous (Twelfth Night; "consanguinity" was already in use)

control (n.) (Twelfth Night)

countless (Titus Andronicus / Pericles)

courtship (several, seems unikely)

critic (Love's Labour's Lost; Latin term)

critical (not in today's sense) (Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream)

cruelhearted (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)

Dalmatians (Cymbeline)

dauntless (Macbeth)

dawn (I Henry IV, King John; first use as a noun, the standard had been "dawning")

day's work (several, must have been a common expression)

deafening (II Henry IV; in the sense of a noise that is loud but does not produce real deafness)

to denote (several; already a word in Latin)

depository (???)

discontent (Richard III / Titus Andronicus; the verb was in use but this is the first attestation as a noun)

design (several, seems unlikely)

dexterously (Twelfth Night)

dialogue (several, seems already familiar)

disgraceful (I Henry VI; means "not graceful")

dishearten (Henry V)

to dislocate (King Lear, refers to anatomy)

distasteful (Timon of Athens)

distracted (Hamlet / Measure for Measure; seems possible)

divest (Henry V / King Lear; probably already in use as referring to a royal title)

domineering (Love's Labour's Lost; from a Dutch word)

downstairs (I Henry IV, supposedly first use as an adjective)

droplet (Timon of Athens)

to drug (Macbeth; first use as a verb)

to dwindle (I Henry IV / Macbeth, seems already familiar as a term for body wasting)

to educate (Love's Labour's Lost)

to elbow (King Lear; first use as a verb)

embrace (I Henry VI; first use as a noun)

employer (Much Ado about Nothing)

employment (several, obviously familiar)

engagement (several, seems simply the first attestation)

to enmesh (Othello)

to ensnare (Othello)

enrapt (Troilus and Cressida)

enthroned (Antony and Cleopatra)

epileptic (King Lear; first use as an adjective, though the noun was old)

equivocal (Othello / All's Well that Ends Well; first use as adjective, though the verb "to equivocate" was familiar)

eventful (As You Like It)

excitement (Hamlet / Troilus and Cressida; both times as plural; first use as a noun)

expedience (several, supposedly first use as noun)

exposure (several, supposedly first use as noun)

eyeball (The Tempest)

eyedrops (II Henry IV; means "tears")

eyesore (The Taming of the Shrew)

fanged (Hamlet, first attestation)

farmhouse (The Merry Wives of Windsor; first known use of the compound)

far-off (several, seems already familiar)

fashionable (Timon of Athens / Troilus and Cressida)

fathomless (not today's sense) (Troilus and Cressida)

fitful (Macbeth)

fixture (not current sense) (Merry Wives of Windsor / Winter's Tale)

flawed (King Lear; first use as an adjective)

flowery (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

foppish (King Lear)

fortune-teller (The Comedy of Errors)

to forward (I Henry IV; first use as a verb)

foul-mouthed (several, seems already familiar)

freezing (Cymbeline)

frugal (several; "frugality" was already in common use)

full-grown (Pericles)

gallantry (Troilus and Cressida)

generous (several, obviously already known)

gloomy (several, "to gloom" was a verb)

glow (several; the word had originally meant red-and-warm)

gnarled (Measure for Measure; alteration of knurled which was a standard word for bumpy)

go-between (several, seems familiar)

to gossip (The Comedy of Errors; first use as a verb; "gossip" was one's familiar friends)

gust (III Henry VI, seems already familiar and was an Old Norse word)

half-blooded (King Lear)

hint (Othello, first use in today's sense)

hob-nails (I Henry IV, alleged; seems already familiar)

hobnob (Twelfth Night; older term was "hab, nab", and not in today's sense)

homely (several, seems already familiar)

honey-tongued (Love's Labour's Lost)

hoodwinked (already known from falconry)

hostile (several, seems like a word that is already familiar)

hot-blooded (The Merry Wives of Windsor / King Lear)

housekeeping (The Taming of the Shrew; seems unlikely)

howl (several, clearly familiar)

to humor (Love's Labour's Lost, first attestation as a verb)

hunchbacked (can't find)

to hurry (Comedy of Errors, first attestation as verb)

ill-tempered (can't find)

immediacy (King Lear, first use as noun)

impartial (2 Henry IV)

to impede (Macbeth, first use as verb, though "impediment" was already widely used)

import (several, and not used in the modern sense)

immediacy (King Lear, first attestation as a noun)

importantly (Cymbeline, first attestation as an adverb)

inaudible (All's Well that Ends Well; "audible" was already in use)

inauspicious (Romeo and Juliet)

indistinguishable (not in today's sense)(Troilus and Cressida)

inducement (several, seems unlikely)

investment (II Henry IV, not in present sense)

invitation (The Merry Wives of Windsor; signifies "flirting")

invulnerable King John / Hamlet / The Tempest; first attestation for the negative; Coriolanus has unvulnerable)

jaded (several, seems already a term of contempt)

Judgement Day (I Henry VI; usual term had been "Day of Judgement")

juiced (Merry Wives of Windsor; first attestation as an adjective)

kissing (several, first attestation of the participle, though surely not its first use)

lackluster (As You Like It)

ladybird (Romeo and Juliet)

to lament (several, seems already familiare)

to lapse (several, first attestation as a verb, though already familiar as a noun)

to launder (first use as a verb; "laundress" was in common use)

laughable (The Merchant of Venice)

leaky (Antony and Cleopatra / The Tempest)

leapfrog (Henry V; first attestation but seems unlikely as a coinage)

lonely (several, seems unlikely)

long-legged (can't find)

love letter (can't find)

to lower (several, seems already known)

luggage (first use as noun)

lustrous (Twelfth Night / All's Well that Ends Well)

madcap (several, attestation as adjective; the noun had become popular just before)

majestic (several, first use as adjective)

majestically (I Henry IV; first attestation as adverb)

malignancy (Twelfth Night, seems possible)

manager (Love's Labour's Lost / Midsummer Night's Dream; first attestation as noun)

marketable (As You Like It; first use as adjective)

militarist (All's Well that Ends Well)

mimic (Midsummer Night's Dream)

misgiving (Julius Caesar; first use as noun, though "to misgive" was in common use)

misplaced (several, seems unlikely)

to misquote (1 Henry IV; not in the present sense)

money's worth (Love's Labours Lost)

monumental (several, seems unlikely)

moonbeam (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

mortifying (Merchant of Venice / Much Ado About Nothing)

motionless (Henry V)

mountaineer (Cymbeline; the sense is "hillbilly")

multitudinous (Macbeth)

neglect (several, obviously already known)

to negotiate (Much Ado about Nothing / Twelfth Night; verb from the Latin)

new-fallen (Venus and Adonis / I Henry IV)

new-fangled (Love's Labour's Lost / As You Like It)

nimble-footed (several, seems already a familiar expression)

noiseless (King Lear / All's Well that Ends Well)

to numb (King Lear, first attestation as a transitive verb)

obscene (several; straight from Latin)

obsequiously (first use of the adverb; comes from "obsequies", or funeral rites)

outbreak (Hamlet, first attestation as a noun)

to outdare (I Henry IV)

to outgrow (can't find)

to outweigh (can't find)

over-cool (II Henry IV)

overgrowth (can't find)

over-ripened (II Henry VI ;first-use of the familiar compound)

over-weathered The Merchant of Venice)

overview (can't find)

pageantry (Pericles Prince of Tyre)

pale-faced (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

to pander (several; was already a proverb)

pedant (several, seems already in common use for a stuffy teacher)

perplex (King John / Cymbeline)

perusal (Sonnets / Hamlet; first use as a noun)

to petition (Antony and Cleopatra / Coriolanus; first use as a verb)

pious (several, seems very unlikely)

posture (several, seems known)

premeditated (several; first attestation of the adjective, though the noun was in use)

priceless (???)

Promethean (Othello / Love's Labour's Lost)

protester (not today's sense) (Julius Caesar)

published (2 Henry VI)

puking (As You Like It)

puppy-dog (King John / Henry V)

on purpose (several; seems very unlikely)

quarrelsome (As You Like It / Taming of the Shrew)

questing (As You Like It; first use of the gerund)

in question (several, seems already in use)

radiance (several; first use as noun)

to rant (The Merry Wives of Windsor / Hamlet; loan-word from Dutch or previously-unattested English word?)

rancorous (2 Henry VI, Comedy of Errors, Richard III, all early plays, seems unlikely)

raw-boned (I Henry VI)

reclusive (Much Ado about Nothing; first use as adjective)

reinforcement (Troilus and Cressida / Coriolanus; seems already in use)

reliance (???)

remorseless (several, first attestation of this form)

reprieve (several, obviously already in use)

resolve (several, obviously already in use)

restoration (King Lear)

restraint (several, seems already familiar)

retirement (II Henry IV; refers to military retreat; first use as noun)

revolting (several, obviously already familiar)

to rival (King Lear; first attestation as verb; noun was well-known)

rival (Midsummer Night's Dream; first attestation as adjective, noun was well-known)

roadway (II Henry IV; first attestation of the compound)

rumination (As You Like It; first use as noun)

sacrificial (Timon of Athens; not today's usage)

sanctimonious (Measure for Measure / Tempest)

satisfying (Othello / Cymbeline)

savage (several; the word was obviously already in use)

savagery (King John / Henry V; first use as this form)

schoolboy (Julius Caesar / Much Ado about Nothing)

scrubbed (The Merchant of Venice)

scuffle (Antony and Cleopatra; first use as noun, though the verb was familiar)

seamy-side (Othello)

to secure (II Henry VI; first use as a verb; the adjective was well-known)

shipwrecked (Pericles Prince of Tyre, seems unlikely)

shooting star (Richard II; first known use of the phrase)

shudder (Timon of Athens; first use as a noun; verb already well-known)

silk (alleged; obviously not Shakespeare's)

stocking (obviously not Shakespeare's)

silliness (Othello)

skim milk (I Henry IV; first use of the familiar term)

to sneak (Measure for Measure; supposed first use of the verb)

soft-hearted (2 Henry VI / 3 Henry VI; first use of the familiar phrase)

spectacled (Coriolanus; not in today's sense)

splitting (II Henry VI; first use as adjective)

sportive (Richard III / Comedy of Errors / All's Well that Ends Well; supposed first use)

to squabble (Othello; supposed first use, as with "to swagger")

stealthy (Macbeth; first use as adjective)

stillborn (can't find, obviously not Shakespeare's)

to submerge (Antony and Cleopatra)

successful (Titus Andronicus, seems dubious)

suffocating (Othello; supposed first use as a descriptor)

to sully (I Henry VI)

superscript (Love's Labour's Lost)

to supervise (Love's Labour's Lost; also Hamlet but not in today's sense)

to swagger (II Henry IV, others; in context this seems to be already a well-known word)

switch (first use to mean "twig")

tardily (All's Well that Ends Well; first use of adverb)

tardiness (King Lear; "tardy" as adjective was well-known)

threateningly (All's Well that Ends Well; first use of the adverb)

tightly (The Merry Wives of Windsor; first use as an adverb)

time-honored (Richard II)

title page (can't find; seems unlikely)

to torture (several; first use as a verb)

traditional (Richard III; first use as adjective)

tranquil (Othello; "tranquility" was an old word)

transcendence (All's Well that Ends Well; first attestation of the noun)

tongue-tied (III Henry VI / Julius Caesar / Troilus and Cressida; seems first attestation of a phrase already in use)

unaccommodated (King Lear)

unaware (Venus and Adonis; first use as an adverb; the adjective was not yet in use)

to unclog (Coriolanus, first use as a negative)

unappeased (Titus Andronicus)

unchanging (The Merchant of Venice)

unclaimed (As You Like It; not in today's sense)

uncomfortable (Romeo and Juliet)

to uncurl (???)

to undervalue (The Merchant of Venice)

to undress (The Taming of the Shrew; seems unlikely)

unearthly (Winter's Tale)

uneducated (Love's Labour's Lost, seems possible)

ungoverned (Richard III / King Lear)

to unhand (Hamlet)

unmitigated (Much Ado about Nothing)

unpublished (King Lear; in the sense of "still unknown")

unreal (Macbeth, first use of the negative)

unsolicited (Titus Andronicus / Henry VIII; supposed first use of the form)

unswayed (Richard III; not in today's sense, but "is the sword unswung?")

unwillingness (Richard III / Richard II)

upstairs (I Henry IV; supposedly first use as an adjective)

urging (Richard III / Comedy of Errors; first attestation as a noun

useful (several, seems already familiar)

varied (Love's Labour's Lost, others)

vastly (Rape of Lucrece, not present sense)

viewless (Measure for Measure; means "invisible")

vulnerable (Macbeth; used in today's sense)

watchdog (The Tempest; first use of the phrase)

well-behaved (The Merry Wives of Windsor; first known use of the compound)

well-bred (II Henry IV; first use of the familiar compound)

well-read (I Henry IV)

whirligig (Twelfth Night)

to widen (???)

widowed (Sonnet 97 / Coriolanus; first use as an adjective)

worn out (Romeo and Juliet / 2 Henry IV; seems unlikely)

worthless (III Henry VI, several others; seems just a first attestation)

yelping (I Henry VI; first attestation of this adjectival form)

zany (Love's Labour Lost; simply a loan-word from Italian commedia dell'arte)

Click here for some words which Shakespeare evidently coined but which did NOT pass into common use. They include "affined", "to articulate" (in the sense of "to negotiate"), "attasked", "cadent" (in the sense of "dripping"), "to beetle", "bubukles", "co-marts", "co-mates", "congreeing", "conspectuities", "crants" (a borrowing for "flower crowns"), "credent", "dispunge", "enactures", "to force" (meaning "to reinforce"), "fracted", "to friend" (thanks to social media, now a mainstream word again! -- there ar earlier attestations), "germins", "immediacy" (meaning immediate authority from), "immoment", "impair" (adjective for impure), "incarnadine", "incorpsed" (incorporated), "indigest" (disordered), "intrenchant" (incapable of being cut), "irregulous", "jointing", "mered", "mirable", "mistempered", "operant", "oppugnancy", "palmy", "out-crafted", "out-villained", "out-tongued", "plantage", "primogenitive", "primy", "propugnation", "relume", "reprobance", "rigol", "rooky", "roted", "rubious", "smilets", "to stell", "stellèd", "supplyment", "unsisting", and "virgined" (held securely).

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NOTE: This list (including some of the errors I originally made) is found in several other places online. That's fine, but I've asked that folks who want this on their own sites mention that I am the original compiler. For many English-speakers, the following phrases are familiar enough to be considered common expressions, proverbs, and/or clichés.

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you will always feel the opposite of what you really are but that's the way it is for almost everything for example people that are not very good at something will claim that they're really good and people that are good will think they are not very good

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"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool." - William Shakespeare quotes from BrainyQuote.com

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Some of Shakespear's famous words and phrases  

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Some of Shakespear's famous words and phrases  

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Shakespeare has created so many different words. Shakesp4.
The early life of William Shakespeare was filled with mystery due to the lack of documented facts about the early years of the great Bard. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 - the exact date has only been estimated as April 23. John Shakespeare and Mary Arden were the parents of Shakespeare. William was the third of eight children, although the two born before him had died possibly of the Bubonic plague. At least two more of his siblings died of the plague which Shakespeare had a life-long fear of. William Shakespeare attended the Grammar school at Stratford-upon-Avon until he was about 13/14 years of age. He married Anne Hathaway in 1582 - Anne was 6 months pregnant. Shakespeare had three children. He left Stratford-upon-Avon and his young family to go to London - no one really knows the reason why but there were rumours that he had been accused of theft.
eare might not have invented some of the words and phrases, but his works are the first time the words were actually written down.

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was not only a prolific writer, he is said to have introduced thousands of words and phrases into the English language. However, it is commonly suggested that Shakespeare might not have invented certain words and phrases, but rather his works are the first time the words were actually written down. The argument by many scholars is that words and phrases attributed to Shakespeare were probably spoken first. This does not discount the fact, however, that Shakespeare was a master of the English language, demonstrating great wit.

Words that Shakespeare Invented

Here are some common words that first appeared in Shakespeare's plays and their meanings:

Auspicious - favorable; promising success; a good omen. A wedding is an example of an auspicious occasion.

Baseless - without a foundation; not based on fact. If you accuse someone of wrongdoing, make sure that you have support to back up your claim and it is not a baseless accusation.

Barefaced - shameless; without concealment or disguise. When someone tells a 'barefaced lie' it is not a very good one and you immediately know it is not true.

Castigate - to punish harshly. Sometimes celebrities and politicians are castigated in the press more harshly than ordinary citizens.

Clangor - a loud (clanging) sound. Ghosts are sometimes said to be followed by the loud clangor of chains.

Dexterously - skillful, especially in the use of one's hands (or also one's mind). A good carpenter can dexterously build a bookshelf very easily.

Dwindle - to get smaller; diminish. Often used to describe money. Many people's savings dwindle after losing a job.

Multitudinous - a lot; a great number. You are in luck if you can say that you have a multitudinous amount of friends.

Sanctimonious - pretending to be very religious or righteous. Sometimes people who judge others harshly are sanctimonious.

Watchdog - a person or group that keeps close watch to discover wrong or illegal activity. A popular watchdog group is PETA, which exposes wrongful actions against animals.

Phrases Shakespeare Invented

Here are some phrases that Shakespeare is said to have invented, many of which are commonly used today.

"It's Greek to me" (Julius Caesar) - When you say, "it's Greek to me" you are admitting that you do not know or understand something.

"Fair play" (The Tempest) - Follow the rules, especially in competitions or sports.

"All that glitters isn't gold" (Merchant of Venice) - We usually use this phrase after we discover the fact that something that looks good turns out not to be that great.

Folger Shakespeare Library is a comprehensive resource about Shakespeare's works and his life.

MIT has an online version of the complete works of Shakespeare

The Kennedy Center has a lesson plan that can be used to teach a class about Shakespeare words.

"Wear one's heart on one's sleeve" (Othello) - To be a hopeless romantic (or be open and honest about how you feel) is to wear one's heart on one's sleeve.

"Break the ice" (The Taming of the Shrew) - Often when you meet someone for the first time, you "break the ice" by asking them polite questions about themselves.

"The lady doth protest too much" (Hamlet) - If someone denies something more than once, you can say "the lady doth protest too much," meaning you think that they feel the opposite to what they are saying.

"Clothes make the man" (Hamlet) - Although not always true, this phrase implies that how a person dresses tells you something about who they are as a person.

"A laughing stock" (The Merry Wives of Windsor) - To be a laughing stock is to be considered a joke by many people.

"Too much of a good thing" (As You Like It) - It is said that "too much of a good thing" (i.e. money, love, food) is not necessarily good for you.

"In a pickle" (The Tempest) - To be "in a pickle" is to be in trouble or a situation that you cannot easily get out of.

Additional Resources

If you want to learn more about Shakespeare, here are some great resources:

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list of words and phrases shakespeare invented

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words and phrases created by shakespeare

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List of Words and Phrases Shakespeare Invented

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was not only a prolific writer, he is said to have introduced thousands of words and phrases into the English language. However, it is commonly suggested that Shakespeare might not have invented certain words and phrases, but rather his works are the first time the words were actually written down.