Some Words We Owe to Shakespeare
BY ROMA PANGANIBAN – JANUARY 31, 2013
Shakespeare’s scripts contain over 2200 never-before-seen words—a diverse collection of loan-words from foreign languages, compound words from existing English terms, nouns turned into verbs, and creatively applied prefixes—many of which have entered into everyday language. Here are some examples of words we can thank Shakespeare for.
1. Addiction: Othello, Act II, Scene II
“It is Othello’s pleasure, our noble and valiant general, that, upon certain tidings now arrived, importing the mere perdition of the Turkish fleet, every man put himself into triumph; some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what sport and revels his addiction leads him.” – Herald
If not for that noble and valiant general and his playwright, our celebrity news coverage might be sorely lacking.
2. Assassination: Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII
“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly: if the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch with his surcease success.” – Macbeth
Though the term “assassin” had been observed in use prior to the Scottish play, it seems apt that the work introduced yet another term for murder most foul.
3. Belongings: Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene I
“Thyself and thy belongings are not thine own so proper as to waste thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.” – Duke Vincentio
People prior to Shakespeare’s time did own things; they just referred to them by different words.
4. Cold-blooded: King John, Act III, Scene I
“Thou cold-blooded slave, hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side, been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend upon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strength, and dost thou now fall over to my fores?” – Constance
Beyond its literal meaning, the 17th-century play initiated a metaphorical use for the term that is now most often used to describe serial killers and vampires—two categories which, of course, need not be mutually exclusive.
5. Eyeball: The Tempest, Act I, Scene II
“Go make thyself like a nymph o’ the sea: be subject to no sight but thine and mine, invisible to every eyeball else.” – Prospero
Shakespeare’s protagonist Prospero, though no medical doctor, can claim to be the first fictional character to name those round objects with which we see.
6. Fashionable: Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene III
“For time is like a fashionable host that slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, and with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly, grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, and farewell goes out sighing.” – Ulysses
And with just 11 letters, centuries of debate over what’s hot or not began.
7. Inaudible: All’s Well That Ends Well, Act V, Scene III
“Let’s take the instant by the forward top; for we are old, and on our quick’st decrees the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time steals ere we can effect them.” – King of France
One of a number of words (invulnerable, indistinguishable, inauspicious, among others) which Shakespeare invented only in the sense of adding a negative in- prefix where it had never been before.
8. Manager: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene I
“Where is our usual manager of mirth? What revels are in hand? Is there no play to ease the anguish of a torturing hour?” – King Theseus
If not for Shakespeare, workday complaining in the office break room just wouldn’t be the same.
Of course, just because the first written instances of these terms appeared in Shakespeare’s scripts doesn’t exclude the possibility that they existed in the oral tradition prior to him writing them, but as Shakespeare might have said, it was high time (The Comedy of Errors) for such household words (Henry V).
Adapted from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/48657/20-words-we-owe-william-shakespeare visited on 26/Feb/2020
