Shakespeare surprises and catches the brain off guard by inserting strange words into seemingly regular phrases, resulting in a sudden rush of activity—a feeling of drama built from the simplest of things. These unexpected words are called "hapax legomena" (meaning "once-only wonders") by scholars. They occur so rarely that we can learn much about the history of the English language from them. Hapax legomena are like secret messages hidden in poems. We know they're there because we have seen them before, but only once. This phenomenon has fascinated scholars since it was first noticed over 500 years ago. Today, computer programs can search through millions of words of text for matches with known hapax legomena, and new ones are still being discovered! In Shakespeare's time, these words were not yet recognized as such. Instead, they were simply included as if they were part of common speech. This is why we can learn so much from them about how people spoke then: their grammar, vocabulary, and syntax. For example, scholars have found evidence that some of these rare words came from Latin, French, or other languages. This shows that foreigners were speaking English at the time of Shakespeare's birth!