William Shakespeare, whose birthday is celebrated on April 23, will forever live in our hearts and minds, even if we’ve never read his works. Lines from his plays roll off the tongues of even the most uneducated, and the list of words made commonplace by the bard is impressive. There is much debate on Shakespeare actually coining words, but most authorities agree that what was conversational language of the time may have been lost had ol’ Will not included them in his writings.
According to Macrone in Brush Up Your Shakespeare, the Oxford English Dictionary credits Shakespeare as the first to use these words, among others: “arch-villain,” “bedazzle,” “cheap” (as in vulgar or flimsy), “dauntless,” “embrace” (as a noun), “fashionable,” “go-between,” “honey-tongued,” “inauspicious,” “lustrous,” “nimble-footed,” “outbreak,” “pander,” “sanctimonious,” “time-honored,” “unearthly,” “vulnerable,” and “well-bred.” (Source: “Shakespeare’s Coined Words Now Common Currency,” National Geographic, Oct. 28, 2010)
Shakespeare’s use of unique phrases, whether uniquely his creations or not, have withstood the test of time. Take, for example, these phrases from Brush Up Your Shakespeare:
• Eaten out of house and home
• Pomp and circumstance
• Foregone conclusion
• Full circle
• The makings of
• Method in the madness
• Neither rhyme nor reason
• One fell swoop
• Seen better days
• It smells to heaven
• A sorry sight
• A spotless reputation
• Strange bedfellows
• The world’s (my) oyster
On his birthday and on all days, people from “all corners of the world” (also from Shakespeare) help us to remember the man and his work simply by – well – talking. Happy belated birthday, William!
Retired from education after serving 30 years (twenty-eight as an English teacher and two years as a new-teacher mentor), Shirley enjoys her life with family and friends while serving her community, church, and school in Flour Bluff, Texas. She is the creator and managing editor of The Paper Trail, an online news/blog site that serves to offer a glimpse into the past and present of the little community of Flour Bluff. She wrote for The Flour Bluff Messenger, wrote and edited for The Texas Shoreline News, a Corpus Christi print newspaper that existed from December 2017 to April 2020, served as copy editor on three books, and continues to tutor students of all ages in the lively art of writing.
