Shakespeare's Words & Phrases
In all of his work - the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems - Shakespeare uses 17,677 words: Of those, 1,700 were first used by Shakespeare.
This list of words that we use in our daily speech were all brought into usage by Shakespeare:
accommodation, aerial, amazement, apostrophe, assassination, auspicious, baseless, bloody, bump, castigate, changeful, clangor, control (noun), countless, courtship, critic, critical, dexterously, dishearten, dislocate, dwindle, eventful, exposure, fitful, frugal, generous, gloomy, gnarled, hurry, impartial, inauspicious, indistinguishable, invulnerable, lapse, laughable, lonely, majestic, misplaced, monumental, multitudinous, obscene, palmy, perusal, pious, premeditated, radiance, reliance, road, sanctimonious, seamy, sportive, submerge, suspicious
As if the above words were not enough, Shakespeare also put common words together to make up new phrases:
| all that glitters isn't gold |
| barefaced |
| be all and end all |
| break the ice |
| breathe one's last |
| brevity is the soul of wit |
| catch a cold |
| clothes make the man |
| disgraceful conduct |
| dog will have his day |
| eat out of house and home |
| elbowroom |
| fair play |
| fancy-free |
| flaming youth |
| foregone conclusion |
| frailty, thy name is woman |
| give the devil his due |
| green eyed monster |
| heart of gold |
| heartsick |
| hot-blooded |
| housekeeping |
| it smells to heaven |
| it's Greek to me |
| lackluster |
| leapfrog |
| live long day |
| long-haired |
| method in his madness |
| mind's eye |
| ministering angel |
| more sinned against than sinning |
| naked truth |
| neither a borrower nor a lender be |
| one fell swoop |
| pitched battle |
| primrose path |
| strange bedfellows |
| the course of true love never did run smooth |
| the lady doth protest too much |
| the milk of human kindness |
| to thine own self be true |
| too much of a good thing |
| towering passion |
| wear one's heart on one's sleeve |
| witching time of the night |
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