Shakespeare invented more words than most people even know. Seriously, there’s at least 1,500 different words and phrases that don’t appear anywhere prior to the Bard of Avon putting them on paper. When he got stuck trying to think up a word, the man just made his own.
It’s kind of like what rappers do today, except the words Shakespeare made up got embedded into our culture and have formed the cornerstone of our discourse, rather than being obnoxiously spouted by white college students trying to be ironic. And while they weren’t all winners (“unhair” still seems to be struggling) others, as you’ll see, are so common you’ve probably already quoted Shakespeare today and you didn’t even know it. Fo’ sheezy.
Here are the ten:
- Eyeball
- Puking
- Skim milk
- Obscene
- Hot-Blooded
- The game is afoot
- Epileptic
- Wormhole
- Alligator
- Household words
Details on these interesting words and phrases.
I’ve never heard of Hod Blod? I assume you must have hot blod to be hot-blodded.
Wow! It’s amazing to think that Francis Bacon came up with so many innovations in English! 😉