Home > Blossary: Shakespeare's Vocabulary
This is a great look at some of the words Shakespeare invented (or popularized) in his plays.

Category: Literature

20 Terms

Created by: Carissa

Number of Blossarys: 6

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Collected Terms
English, UK (UE)
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It is no surprise to anyone who has read Shakespeare's tragedies that he uses the word gloomy. What may be a surprise is that while it was a popular verb before, Shakespeare popularized it as an ...

Domain: Literature; Category: General literature

Just like now in Shakespeare's time there were farms and houses. He was the first to create a compound term by combining to two words in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Domain: Architecture; Category: General architecture

Humans have always had elbows, but before Shakespeare we had no word to express how we used them. Luckily, in King Lear he introduced the verb form and, "to elbow" was born.

Domain: Literature; Category: General literature

People had epilepsy before Shakespeare; but Shakespeare was the first to coin the adjective epileptic. We see this word for the first time in his play King Lear.

Domain: Medical; Category: Illness

While people had embraced before, they had never just enjoyed an embrace. Shakespeare was the first to use this verb as a noun in I Henry VI.

Domain: Literature; Category: General literature

Shakespeare didn't mind borrowing from other languages. Domineering has been around in the Netherlands as a Dutch word, but Love's Labour's Lost was the first time it was used in the the English ...

Domain: Literature; Category: General literature

In an example of poetic license, Shakespeare was the first to use deafening to mean something that was very loud, yet did not actually make a person deaf. It was first seen in II Henry IV.

Domain: Literature; Category: General literature

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