Shakespeare created how many words

Below is a list of a few of the words Shakespeare coined or adapted, hyperlinked to the play and scene from which it comes. When the word appears in multiple plays, the link will take you to the play in which it first appears. For a more in-depth look at Shakespeare's coined words, please click here. For example, "elbow" was a noun before Shakespeare, but he turned it into a verb. How many words did Shakespeare invent?

What kind of words? And which words are those exactly? My, what a perfectly round number! Such a large and perfectly round number is misleading at best, and is more likely just wrong—there is in fact a bunch of debate about the accuracy of this number.

For starters, we can blame the Oxford English Dictionary. This famous dictionary often called the OED for short is famous, in part, because it provides incredibly thorough definitions of words, but also because it identifies the first time each word actually appeared in written English.

Shakespeare appears as the first documented user of more words than any other writer, making it convenient to assume that he was the creator of all of those words. In reality, though, many of these words were probably part of everyday discourse in Elizabethan England.

Ryan Buda , a writer at Letterpile, explains it like this:. But most likely, the word was in use for some time before it is seen in the writings of Shakespeare. The fact that the word first appears there does not necessarily mean that he made it up himself, but rather, he could have borrowed it from his peers or from conversations he had with others.

However, while Shakespeare might have been just the first person to write down some words, he definitely did create many words himself, plenty of which we still use to this day. The list a ways down below contains the words that almost certainly originated from Shakespeare himself. Some writers invent words in the same way Thomas Edison invented light bulbs: they cobble together bits of sound and create entirely new words without any meaning or relation to existing words.

Shakespeare did not create nonce words. He took an entirely different approach. When he invented words, he did it by working with existing words and altering them in new ways. More specifically, he would create new words by:. Some words stuck around and some didn't.

Although lexicographers are continually discovering new origins and earliest usages of words, below are listed words and definitions we still use today that are widely attributed to Shakespeare. Alligator: n a large, carnivorous reptile closely related to the crocodile Romeo and Juliet , Act 5 Scene 1. Fashionable: adj stylish; characteristic of a particular period Troilus and Cressida , Act 3 Scene 3.

Lonely: adj feeling sad due to lack of companionship Coriolanus , Act 4 Scene 1.