did you know? - William Shakespeare invented the word swagger. In... did you know? permalink Advertisement William Shakespeare invented the word swagger. In fact, he invented over 1,700 common words that we use today, including bedazzled, aroused, drugged, addiction, puking, bloodstained, accused, dauntless, assassination, cold-blooded, elbow, and eyeball. Source Advertisement Words Shakespeare Invented Words Shakespeare Invented The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented over 1700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original. Below is a list of a few of the words Shakespeare coined, 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 .

Shakespeares Invented Words Tweet In all of his works - the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems - Shakespeare uses 17,677 words: Of those, over 1,700 were first record in print by Shakespeare. Most of these words may have existed in languages like French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin for hundreds or thousands of years. Shakespeare took these words and made them sound more English and added them into the written English language. Borrowing or adopting a word or a phrase from another language, is known as neologizing. Well we cannot say for certain that Shakespeare invented these words (since the oral use is unrecorded), according to the Oxford English Dictionary we can say this is the first recorded written usage of these words.

Here is a list of words that we use in our daily speech that were brought into usage by Shakespeare: abstemious 20 Words We Owe to William Shakespeare | Mental Floss 20 Words We Owe to William Shakespeare Thinkstock/Erin McCarthy Like us on Facebook No high school English curriculum is complete without a mandatory dose of William Shakespeare, and no American teenager makes it to graduation without whining about how boring it is to learn about iambic pentameter. As contemporary speakers of the English language, however, they might be interested to learn how much the Bard of Avon had in common with the generations that popularized the acronyms LOL and OMG and reinvented the 1940s slang term “hipster.” Endlessly imaginative and not overly concerned with grammatical convention, Shakespeare’s scripts contain over 2200 never-before-seen words—a diverse collection of loan-words from foreign languages, compound words from existing English terms, nouns turned into verbs, and creatively applied prefixes—many of which have entered into everyday language. Here are 20 examples of words we can thank Shakespeare for. 1.

Addiction: Othello, Act II, Scene II “It is Othello's pleasure, our noble and valiant general, that, upon certain tidings now arrived, importing the mere perdition of the Turkish fleet, every man put himself into triumph; some to dance, some to make bonfires, each man to what sport and revels his addiction leads him.” – Herald If not for that noble and valiant general and his playwright, our celebrity news coverage might be sorely lacking. 2. Arch-villain: Timon of Athens, Act V, Scene I “You that way and you this, but two in company; each man apart, all single and alone, yet an arch-villain keeps him company.” – Timon With the added prefix of arch-, meaning more extreme than others of the same type, Shakespeare was able to distinguish the baddest of the bad. 3.

Assassination: Macbeth, Act I, Scene VII “If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly: if the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch with his surcease success.” – Macbeth Though the term “assassin” had been observed in use prior to the Scottish play, it seems apt that the work introduced yet another term for murder most foul. 4. Bedazzled: The Taming of the Shrew, Act IV, Scene V “Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes, that have been so bedazzled with the sun that everything I look on seemeth green.” – Katherina A word first used to describe the particular gleam of sunlight is now used to sell rhinestone-embellished jeans. Maybe poetry really is dead. 5. Belongings: Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene I “Thyself and thy belongings are not thine own so proper as to waste thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.” – Duke Vincentio People prior to Shakespeare’s time did own things; they just referred to them by different words. 6.

Cold-blooded: King John, Act III, Scene I “Thou cold-blooded slave, hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side, been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend upon thy stars, thy fortune and thy strength, and dost thou now fall over to my fores?” – Constance Beyond its literal meaning, the 17th-century play initiated a metaphorical use for the term that is now most often used to describe serial killers and vampires—two categories which, of course, need not be mutually exclusive. 7. Dishearten: Henry V, Act IV, Scene I “Therefore when he sees reason of fears, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are: yet, in reason, no man should possess him with any appearance of fear, lest he, by showing it, should dishearten his army.” – King Henry V The opposite of “hearten,” a word already extant at the time of Shakespeare’s writing, “dishearten” was most appropriately first utilized in print by King Henry V, who didn’t let insurmountable odds at the Battle of Agincourt get him down. 8.

Eventful: As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII “Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” - Jaques If all the world’s a stage, it’s safe to assume that an event or two is taking place. 9. Eyeball: The Tempest, Act I, Scene II “Go make thyself like a nymph o' the sea: be subject to no sight but thine and mine, invisible to every eyeball else.” – Prospero Shakespeare’s protagonist Prospero, though no medical doctor, can claim to be the first fictional character to name those round objects with which we see. 10. Fashionable: Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene III “For time is like a fashionable host that slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, and with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, and farewell goes out sighing.” – Ulysses And with just 11 letters, centuries of debate over what’s hot or not began. 11.

Half-blooded/hot-blooded: King Lear, Act V, Scene III/ Act III, Scene III “Half-blooded fellow, yes.” – Albany “Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took our youngest born, I could as well be brought to knee his throne, and, squire-like; pension beg to keep base life afoot.” – Lear As is the tradition in Shakespearean tragedy, nearly everyone in King Lear dies, so the linguistic fascination here with blood is unsurprising, to say the least. 12. Inaudible: All’s Well That Ends Well, Act V, Scene III “Let's take the instant by the forward top; for we are old, and on our quick'st decrees the inaudible and noiseless foot of Time steals ere we can effect them.” – King of France One of a number of words (invulnerable, indistinguishable, inauspicious, among others) which Shakespeare invented only in the sense of adding a negative in- prefix where it had never been before. 13. Ladybird: Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene III “What, lamb! What, ladybird! God forbid! Where's this girl?

What, Juliet!” – Nurse Although the Oxford English Dictionary notes that this particular term of endearment has fallen into disuse, maybe it’s about time for its comeback. Valentine’s Day is coming up, after all. 14. Manager: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V, Scene I “Where is our usual manager of mirth? What revels are in hand? Is there no play to ease the anguish of a torturing hour?” – King Theseus If not for Shakespeare, workday complaining in the office break room just wouldn’t be the same. 15. Multitudinous: Macbeth, Act II, Scene II “No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas in incarnadine, making the green one red.” – Macbeth “Multitudinous” may not be the most appropriate synonym when the phrase “a lot” starts to crop up too often in your writing, but it’s certainly the one with the most letters. 16. New-fangled: Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I, Scene I “At Christmas I no more desire a rose than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth.” – Biron Ironically, this word sounds old-fashioned if used today.

17. Pageantry: Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act V, Scene II “This, my last boon, give me, for such kindness must relieve me, that you aptly will suppose what pageantry, what feats, what shows, what minstrelsy, and pretty din, the regent made in Mytilene to greet the king.” – Gower Although modern scholars generally agree that Shakespeare only appears to have written the second half of the play, this newly invented term for an extravagant ceremonial display appears in the section definitively authored by the Bard. 18. Scuffle: Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene I “His captain's heart, which in the scuffles of great fights hath burst the buckles on his breast, reneges all temper, and is become the bellows and the fan to cool a gipsy's lust.” – Philo Another example of an existing verb that Shakespeare decided could stand up just as well as a noun. 19.

Swagger: Henry V, Act II, Scene IV/A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene I “An't please your majesty, a rascal that swaggered with me last night.” – Williams “What hempen home-spuns have we swaggering here, so near the cradle of the fairy queen?” – Puck By transitive property, Shakespeare is responsible for Justin Bieber’s “swag.” 20. Uncomfortable: Romeo and Juliet, Act IV, Scene V “Despised, distressed, hated, martyr'd, kill'd! Uncomfortable time, why camest thou now to murder, murder our solemnity?” - Capulet Un- was another prefix Shakespeare appended to adjectives with a liberal hand. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, a tragedy in which a father mourns his daughter’s suicide, “uncomfortable” seems to have originated with a slightly more drastic sense than how we use it now.

Of course, just because the first written instances of these terms appeared in Shakespeare’s scripts doesn’t preclude the possibility that they existed in the oral tradition prior to his recording them, but as Shakespeare might have said, it was high time (The Comedy of Errors) for such household words (Henry V). Irregular Webcomic! #618 Annotations on: turn off It's an eternal struggle. English is a living language, no matter how much people cringe at new words and migrating meanings. Language has to evolve to keep pace with society - we need words to describe new inventions and ideas that never existed before. And clever and creative use of language is a hallmark of interesting and worthwhile literature. We wouldn't have the word chortle if Lewis Carroll hadn't just made it up. And Shakespeare (the 16th century one) invented over 1,700 words, including assassination, bedroom, critic, eyeball, luggage, radiance, torture, and zany. If people had complained about these newfangled usages and refused to accept them as part of English, imagine how much poorer our language today would be. And yet, we cringe when we see things like wot a looser, ur kidding me, WTF?

LOL! in our kids' English essays. Or when we hear business executives spewing out jawbreaking sentences like Mr Marlowe above. Why is this? As long as the target audience understands and communication occurs without a problem, why should we decry the format of the message? It's a complex question, with no ready answers. Clearly some change is acceptable, and desirable, as our society evolves. But does that mean any change is okay? Personally, I don't think so. Like any tool, language can be good or bad, depending on how it's used. A lot of these new coinages are opaque to much of society, and we're starting to see a generational divide, with younger people using a different form of English to that used by older people and by established literature. Of course, that's happened before too - nobody these days speaks like Shakespeare did - but today the pace of change is a lot faster, accelerated by our technology. I fear that one day soon we will have a society in which people will be speaking multiple mutually unintelligible versions of English, and confusion may creep in.

Good new English comes up with clever reinterpretations of words or coinages with comprehensible roots, that people can understand with a bit of thought, and that are readily memorable and widely applicable. Bad new English is opaque, requires explicit explanation as to what it means, obscures existing meanings, and causes confusion when used outside a resticted context. A lot of the new coinages out there today are bad new English. The problem is, with technology allowing mass communication on an unprecendented scale, bad new English can propagate. And once it reaches a certain threshold, it can actually mutate into something that most people understand and accept. It's a new process, and like it or hate it, it's going to keep on happening. We will just have to evolve to cope. Maybe the next generation will be fluently multilingual, able to interact in abbreviated netspeak, casual English, more formal English, and still be able to get something from Shakespeare's texts. Whatever happens, the common English of 100 years from now will probably be more different to today's English than today's English is to Shakespeare's English. And the Bard would probably be very interested to see it.

2013-10-19 Rerun commentary: This topic is a can of worms, as the pace of change continues to grow. A lot of new usage these days tends to spring from people using a word to mean what they think it means, rather than what has been the previously accepted meaning. As long as everyone thinks it means the new thing, there's actually no problem. But there will always be people who hold out that it doesn't mean that, it only means the thing it used to mean before. I think that we shall never see the end of this conflict. On another note, I am very impressed that I managed to make Mr Marlowe's speech entirely out of corporate buzzwords, without any annoying conventional words such as articles or prepositions intruding. LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO Group of companies , which does not sponsor, authorise, or endorse this site. Words and Phrases Coined by Shakespeare Words and Phrases Coined by Shakespeare NOTE: This list (including some of the errors I originally made) is found in several other places online. That's fine, but I've asked that folks who want this on their own sites mention that I am the original compiler.

For many English-speakers, the following phrases are familiar enough to be considered common expressions, proverbs, and/or clichés. All of them originated with or were popularized by Shakespeare.

All our yesterdays (Macbeth) All that glitters is not gold (The Merchant of Venice)("glisters") All's well that ends well (title) As good luck would have it (The Merry Wives of Windsor) As merry as the day is long (Much Ado About Nothing / King John) Bated breath (The Merchant of Venice) Bag and baggage (As You Like It / Winter's Tale) Bear a charmed life (Macbeth) Be-all and the end-all (Macbeth) Beggar all description (Antony and Cleopatra) Better foot before ("best foot forward") (King John) The better part of valor is discretion (I Henry IV; possibly already a known saying) In a better world than this (As You Like It) Neither a borrower nor a lender be (Hamlet) Brave new world (The Tempest) Break the ice (The Taming of the Shrew) Breathed his last (3 Henry VI) Brevity is the soul of wit (Hamlet) Refuse to budge an inch (Measure for Measure / Taming of the Shrew) Catch a cold (Cymbeline; claimed but seems unlikely, seems to refer to bad weather) Cold comfort (The

 Taming of the Shrew / King John) Conscience does make cowards of us all (Hamlet) Come what come may ("come what may") (Macbeth) Comparisons are odorous (Much Ado about Nothing) Crack of doom (Macbeth) Dead as a doornail (2 Henry VI) A dish fit for the gods (Julius Caesar) Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war (Julius Caesar) Dog will have his day (Hamlet; quoted earlier by Erasmus and Queen Elizabeth) Devil incarnate (Titus Andronicus / Henry V) Eaten me out of house and home (2 Henry IV) Elbow room (King John; first attested 1540 according to Merriam-Webster) Farewell to all my greatness (Henry VIII) Faint hearted (I Henry VI) Fancy-free (Midsummer Night's Dream) Fight till the last gasp (I Henry VI) Flaming youth (Hamlet) Forever and a day (As You Like It) For goodness' sake (Henry VIII) Foregone conclusion (Othello) The game is afoot (I Henry IV) The game is up (Cymbeline) Give the devil his due (

I Henry IV) Good riddance (Troilus and Cressida) Jealousy is the green-eyed monster (Othello) It was Greek to me (Julius Caesar) Heart of gold (Henry V) Her infinite variety (Antony and Cleopatra) 'Tis high time (The Comedy of Errors) Hoist with his own petard (Hamlet) Household words (Henry V) A horse, a horse!

My kingdom for a horse! (Richard III) Ill wind which blows no man to good (2 Henry IV) Improbable fiction (Twelfth Night) In a pickle (The Tempest) In my heart of hearts (Hamlet) In my mind's eye (Hamlet) Infinite space (Hamlet) In my book of memory (I Henry VI) It is but so-so(As You Like It) It smells to heaven (Hamlet) Itching palm (Julius Caesar) Kill with kindness (Taming of the Shrew) Killing frost (Henry VIII) Knit brow (The Rape of Lucrece) Knock knock! Who's there?

(Macbeth) Laid on with a trowel (As You Like It) Laughing stock (The Merry Wives of Windsor) Laugh yourself into stitches (Twelfth Night) Lean and hungry look (Julius Caesar) Lie low (Much Ado about Nothing) Live long day (Julius Caesar) Love is blind (Merchant of Venice) Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water (Henry VIII) Melted into thin air (The Tempest) Though this be madness, yet there is method in it ("There's a method to my madness") (Hamlet) Make a virtue of necessity (The Two Gentlemen of Verona) The Makings of(Henry VIII) Milk of human kindness (Macbeth) Ministering angel (Hamlet) Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows (The Tempest) More honored in the breach than in the observance (Hamlet) More in sorrow than in anger (Hamlet) More sinned against than sinning (King Lear) Much Ado About Nothing (title) Murder most foul (Hamlet) Naked truth (Love's Labours Lost) Neither rhyme nor reason (As You Like It) Not slept one wink (Cymbeline

) Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it (Macbeth) [Obvious] as a nose on a man's face (The Two Gentlemen of Verona) Once more into the breach (Henry V) One fell swoop (Macbeth) One that loved not wisely but too well (Othello) Time is out of joint (Hamlet) Out of the jaws of death (Twelfth Night) Own flesh and blood (Hamlet) Star-crossed lovers (Romeo and Juliet) Parting is such sweet sorrow (Romeo and Juliet) What's past is prologue (The Tempest) [What] a piece of work [is man] (Hamlet) Pitched battle (Taming of the Shrew) A plague on both your houses (Romeo and Juliet) Play fast and loose (King John) Pomp and circumstance (Othello) [A poor] thing, but mine own (As You Like It) Pound of flesh (The Merchant of Venice) Primrose path (Hamlet) Quality of mercy is not strained (The Merchant of Venice) Salad days (Antony and Cleopatra) Sea change (The Tempest) Seen better days (As You Like It?

Timon of Athens?) Send packing (I Henry IV) How sharper than the serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child (King Lear) Shall I compare thee to a summer's day (Sonnets) Make short shrift (Richard III) Sick at heart (Hamlet) Snail paced (Troilus and Cressida) Something in the wind (The Comedy of Errors) Something wicked this way comes (Macbeth) A sorry sight (Macbeth) Stony hearted (I Henry IV) Such stuff as dreams are made on (The Tempest) Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep ("Still waters run deep") (2 Henry VI) The short and the long of it (The Merry Wives of Windsor) Sweet are the uses of adversity (As You Like It) Sweets to the sweet (Hamlet) Swift as a shadow (A Midsummer Night's Dream Tedious as a twice-told tale (King John) Set my teeth on edge (I Henry IV) Tell truth and shame the devil (1 Henry IV) Thereby hangs a tale (Othello; in context, this seems to have been already in use) There's no such thing (?) (Macbeth) There's the rub

 (Hamlet) To gild refined gold, to paint the lily ("to gild the lily") (King John) To thine own self be true (Hamlet) Too much of a good thing (As You Like It) Tower of strength (Richard III) Towering passion (Hamlet) Trippingly on the tongue (Hamlet) Truth will out (The Merchant of Venice) Violent delights have violent ends (Romeo and Juliet) Wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello) What the dickens (The Merry Wives of Windsor) What's done is done (Macbeth) What's in a name?

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. (Romeo and Juliet) What fools these mortals be (A Midsummer Night's Dream) What the dickens (The Merry Wives of Windsor) Wild-goose chase (Romeo and Juliet) Wish is father to that thought (2 Henry IV) Witching time of night (Hamlet) Working-day world (As You Like It) The world's my oyster (Merry Wives of Windsor) Yeoman's service (Hamlet) Words Supposedly Coined by Shakespeare I compiled these from multiple sources online in 2003. Each of these words and compounds supposedly is not known to have appeared in print prior to the publication of Shakespeare's works. For this reason, people claim that Shakespeare invented these words. How many of these are true coinages by "the Bard", and how many are simply the earliest written attestations of a word or words already in use, I can't tell you. The ones that seem real are new forms of words already in the language.

Words like "advertising", "assassination", "bedazzled", "consanguineous", "dishearten", "enmesh", "eventful", "eyesore", "lackluster", "moonbeam", outbreak", "quarrelsome", "radiance", "reclusive", "seamy-side", "stealthy", "submerge", "time-honored", "undervalued", "unmitigated", "unreal", "well-read", "watchdog", and "whirligig" would have been meaningful to the audience. A few words are first attested in Shakespeare and seem to have caused extra problems for the typesetters. This suggests they are really coined by Shakespeare. One example is "denote". The popular book Coined by Shakespeare acknowledges that it is presenting first attestations rather than certain inventions. For example, "alligator" appeared for the first time in print as an English word in "Romeo and Juliet", but it has Spanish antecedents, and only the terminal "-r" seems to be new with Shakespeare.

"Puke" appears as a vulgar term for vomiting in the near-contemporary "Duchess of Malfi", and it seems well-known; so Shakespeare's use in "As You Like It" seems more likely just a first attestation. The region of Dalmatia is as old as the Roman Empire, and obviously Shakespeare did not coin the adjectival form. Words like "anchovy", "bandit", and "zany" are just first attestations of loan-words. By contrast, in "Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare seems to have been having fun introducing new forms of old words, even though "orgulous" and "deracinate" never did catch on. Right now I'm in the process of referencing these. I would like to hear from anyone who knows for certain about any item on this page. I stand corrected; one of my sources misattributed "fool's paradise" to Romeo and Juliet though it appears in Tyndale's Bible and probably earlier.

abstemious (The Tempest -- a Latin word that meant "to abstain from alcoholic drink" was generalized to sexual behavior as well) academe (Love's Labour's Lost; this is just an English form of "Academy", the Greek for Plato's grove) accommodation (Othello) accused (n.) (Richard II -- first known use as a noun, meaning person accused of a crime) addiction (Henry V / Othello) advertising (adj.)(Measure for Measure; in context, means "being attentive"; the noun was already in use) aerial (Othello) alligator (Romeo and Juliet; Spanish "aligarto" was already in use in English) amazement (13 instances; first known use as a noun) anchovy (I Henry IV; first attestation in English of the Spanish word for dried edible fish) apostrophe ("apostrophas")(Love's Labour's Lost; seems to be a well-known word already) arch-villain (Measure for Measure / Timon of Athens) to arouse (2 Henry VI / Hamlet; "rouse" was the usual form) assassination (Macbeth; "assassin" was already in use and derives from

 "hashish eater") auspicious (several; "auspice" was a Roman practice of fortune-telling by bird flight) bachelorship (I Henry VI) backing (I Henry VI; this is just a pun on a known word) bandit (II Henry VI, actually "bandetto", the first attestation in English of a familiar Italian word for people "banned", i.e., outlaws) barefaced (in the sense of "barefaced power") (Macbeth) baseless (in the sense of fantasy without grounding in fact) (The Tempest) beached (several, merely means "possessing a beach") bedazzled (The Taming of the Shrew) bedroom (A Midsummer Night's Dream, merely means a place to sleep on the ground) belongings (Measure for Measure) bump (Romeo and Juliet; first attestation of onomopoeic word) buzzer (Hamlet; means gossipper) to cake (Timon of Athens, first attestation as a verb) to castigate (Timon of Athens) to cater (As You Like It; from coetous, a buyer of provisions) clangor (3 Henry VI / 2 Henry IV

) to champion (Macbeth; first attestation as a verb, and in an older sense of "to challenge"; though the noun was familiar as someone who would fight for another) circumstantial (As You Like It / Cymbeline; first attestation in the sense of "indirect") cold-blooded (King John; first use to mean "lack of emotion") coldhearted (Antony and Cleopatra) compact (several; seems to have been a common word) to comply (Othello) to compromise (The Merchant of Venice, several of the histories; seems to have been already in use) to cow (Macbeth; first use in English of a Scandinavian verb) consanguineous (Twelfth Night; "consanguinity" was already in use) control (n.) (Twelfth Night) critic (Love's Labour's Lost; Latin term) critical (not in today's sense) (Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream) cruelhearted (The Two Gentlemen of Verona) Dalmatians (Cymbeline) dauntless (Macbeth) dawn (I Henry IV, King John; first use as a noun, the standard had been "dawning") day's

 work (several, must have been a common expression) deafening (II Henry IV; in the sense of a noise that is loud but does not produce real deafness) to denote (several; already a word in Latin) depository (???) discontent (Richard III / Titus Andronicus; the verb was in use but this is the first attestation as a noun) design (several, seems unlikely) dialogue (several, seems already familiar) disgraceful (I Henry VI; means "not graceful") dishearten (Henry V) to dislocate (King Lear, refers to anatomy) distasteful (Timon of Athens) distracted (Hamlet / Measure for Measure; seems possible) divest (Henry V / King Lear; probably already in use as referring to a royal title) domineering (Love's Labour's Lost; from a Dutch word) downstairs (I Henry IV, supposedly first use as an adjective) droplet (Timon of Athens) to drug (Macbeth; first use as a verb) to dwindle (I Henry IV / Macbeth, seems already familiar as a term for body wasting) to educate (Love's Labour's Lost) to elbow (King Lear; first use as a

 verb) embrace (I Henry VI; first use as a noun) employer (Much Ado about Nothing) employment (several, obviously familiar) engagement (several, seems simply the first attestation) to enmesh (Othello) enthroned (Antony and Cleopatra) epileptic (King Lear; first use as an adjective, though the noun was old) equivocal (Othello / All's Well that Ends Well; first use as adjective, though the verb "to equivocate" was familiar) eventful (As You Like It) excitement (Hamlet / Troilus and Cressida; both times as plural; first use as a noun) expedience (several, supposedly first use as noun) exposure (several, supposedly first use as noun) eyeball (The Tempest) eyedrops (II Henry IV; means "tears") eyesore (The Taming of the Shrew) fanged (Hamlet, first attestation) farmhouse (The Merry Wives of Windsor; first known use of the compound) far-off (several, seems already familiar) fashionable (Timon of Athens / Troilus and Cressida) fathomless (not today's sense) (Tro

ilus and Cressida) fitful (Macbeth) fixture (not current sense) (Merry Wives of Windsor / Winter's Tale) flawed (King Lear; first use as an adjective) flowery (A Midsummer Night's Dream) foppish (King Lear) fortune-teller (The Comedy of Errors) to forward (I Henry IV; first use as a verb) foul-mouthed (several, seems already familiar) freezing (Cymbeline) frugal (several; "frugality" was already in common use) full-grown (Pericles) generous (several, obviously already known) gloomy (several, "to gloom" was a verb) glow (several; the word had originally meant red-and-warm) gnarled (Measure for Measure; alteration of knurled which was a standard word for bumpy) go-between (several, seems familiar) to gossip (The Comedy of Errors; first use as a verb; "gossip" was one's familiar friends) gust (III Henry VI, seems already familiar and was an Old Norse word) half-blooded (King Lear) hint (Othello, first use in today's sense) hob-nails (

I Henry IV, alleged; seems already familiar) hobnob (Twelfth Night; older term was "hab, nab", and not in today's sense) homely (several, seems already familiar) honey-tongued (Love's Labour's Lost) hoodwinked (already known from falconry) hostile (several, seems like a word that is already familiar) hot-blooded (The Merry Wives of Windsor / King Lear) housekeeping (The Taming of the Shrew; seems unlikely) howl (several, clearly familiar) to humor (Love's Labour's Lost, first attestation as a verb) hunchbacked (can't find) to hurry (Comedy of Errors, first attestation as verb) ill-tempered (can't find) immediacy (King Lear, first use as noun) impartial (2 Henry IV) to impede (Macbeth, first use as verb, though "impediment" was already widely used) import (several, and not used in the modern sense) immediacy (King Lear, first attestation as a noun) importantly (Cymbeline, first attestation as an adverb) inaudible (All's Well that Ends Well; "

audible" was already in use) inauspicious (Romeo and Juliet) indistinguishable (not in today's sense)(Troilus and Cressida) inducement (several, seems unlikely) investment (II Henry IV, not in present sense) invitation (The Merry Wives of Windsor; signifies "flirting") invulnerable King John / Hamlet / The Tempest; first attestation for the negative; Coriolanus has unvulnerable) jaded (several, seems already a term of contempt) Judgement Day (I Henry VI; usual term had been "Day of Judgement") juiced (Merry Wives of Windsor; first attestation as an adjective) kissing (several, first attestation of the participle, though surely not its first use) lackluster (As You Like It) ladybird (Romeo and Juliet) to lament (several, seems already familiare) to lapse (several, first attestation as a verb, though already familiar as a noun) to launder (first use as a verb; "laundress" was in common use) laughable (The Merchant of Venice) leaky (Antony and Cleopatra / The Tem

pest) leapfrog (Henry V; first attestation but seems unlikely as a coinage) lonely (several, seems unlikely) to lower (several, seems already known) luggage (first use as noun) lustrous (Twelfth Night / All's Well that Ends Well) madcap (several, attestation as adjective; the noun had become popular just before) majestic (several, first use as adjective) majestically (I Henry IV; first attestation as adverb) malignancy (Twelfth Night, seems possible) manager (Love's Labour's Lost / Midsummer Night's Dream; first attestation as noun) marketable (As You Like It; first use as adjective) militarist (All's Well that Ends Well) mimic (Midsummer Night's Dream) misgiving (Julius Caesar; first use as noun, though "to misgive" was in common use) misplaced (several, seems unlikely) to misquote (1 Henry IV; not in the present sense) money's worth (Love's Labours Lost) monumental (several, seems unlikely) moonbeam (A Midsummer Night's Dream) mortifying (Merchant of Venice / Much Ado About Nothing ) motionless (Henry V

) mountaineer (Cymbeline; the sense is "hillbilly") multitudinous (Macbeth) neglect (several, obviously already known) to negotiate (Much Ado about Nothing / Twelfth Night; verb from the Latin) new-fallen (Venus and Adonis / I Henry IV) new-fangled (Love's Labour's Lost / As You Like It) nimble-footed (several, seems already a familiar expression) noiseless (King Lear / All's Well that Ends Well) to numb (King Lear, first attestation as a transitive verb) obscene (several; straight from Latin) obsequiously (first use of the adverb; comes from "obsequies", or funeral rites) outbreak (Hamlet, first attestation as a noun) to outdare (I Henry IV) to outgrow (can't find) over-ripened (II Henry VI ;first-use of the familiar compound) over-weathered The Merchant of Venice) overview (can't find) pageantry (Pericles Prince of Tyre) pale-faced (A Midsummer Night's Dream) to pander (several; was already a proverb) pedant (several, seems already in common

 use for a stuffy teacher) perplex (King John / Cymbeline) perusal (Sonnets / Hamlet; first use as a noun) to petition (Antony and Cleopatra / Coriolanus; first use as a verb) pious (several, seems very unlikely) posture (several, seems known) premeditated (several; first attestation of the adjective, though the noun was in use) priceless (???) Promethean (Othello / Love's Labour's Lost) protester (not today's sense) (Julius Caesar) published (2 Henry VI) puking (As You Like It) puppy-dog (King John / Henry V) on purpose (several; seems very unlikely) quarrelsome (As You Like It / Taming of the Shrew) questing (As You Like It; first use of the gerund) in question (several, seems already in use) radiance (several; first use as noun) to rant (The Merry Wives of Windsor / Hamlet; loan-word from Dutch or previously-unattested English word?) rancorous (2 Henry VI, Comedy of Errors, Richard III, all early plays, seems unlikely)

 raw-boned (I Henry VI) reclusive (Much Ado about Nothing; first use as adjective) reinforcement (Troilus and Cressida / Coriolanus; seems already in use) reliance (???) remorseless (several, first attestation of this form) reprieve (several, obviously already in use) resolve (several, obviously already in use) restoration (King Lear) restraint (several, seems already familiar) retirement (II Henry IV; refers to military retreat; first use as noun) revolting (several, obviously already familiar) to rival (King Lear; first attestation as verb; noun was well-known) rival (Midsummer Night's Dream; first attestation as adjective, noun was well-known) roadway (II Henry IV; first attestation of the compound) rumination (As You Like It; first use as noun) sacrificial (Timon of Athens; not today's usage) sanctimonious (Measure for Measure / Tempest) satisfying (Othello / Cymbeline) savage (several; the word was obviously already in use) savagery (King John / Henry V; first use as this form) schoolboy (Julius Caesar / Much Ado about

 Nothing) scrubbed (The Merchant of Venice) scuffle (Antony and Cleopatra; first use as noun, though the verb was familiar) seamy-side (Othello) to secure (II Henry VI; first use as a verb; the adjective was well-known) shipwrecked (Pericles Prince of Tyre, seems unlikely) shooting star (Richard II; first known use of the phrase) shudder (Timon of Athens; first use as a noun; verb already well-known) silk (alleged; obviously not Shakespeare's) stocking (obviously not Shakespeare's) skim milk (I Henry IV; first use of the familiar term) to sneak (Measure for Measure; supposed first use of the verb) soft-hearted (2 Henry VI / 3 Henry VI; first use of the familiar phrase) spectacled (Coriolanus; not in today's sense) splitting (II Henry VI; first use as adjective) sportive (Richard III / Comedy of Errors / All's Well that Ends Well; supposed first use) to squabble (Othello; supposed first use, as with "to swagger") stealthy (Macbeth; first use as adjective) stillborn (can't find, obviously not Shakespeare

's) to submerge (Antony and Cleopatra) successful (Titus Andronicus, seems dubious) suffocating (Othello; supposed first use as a descriptor) to sully (I Henry VI) superscript (Love's Labour's Lost) to supervise (Love's Labour's Lost; also Hamlet but not in today's sense) to swagger (II Henry IV, others; in context this seems to be already a well-known word) switch (first use to mean "twig") tardily (All's Well that Ends Well; first use of adverb) tardiness (King Lear; "tardy" as adjective was well-known) threateningly (All's Well that Ends Well; first use of the adverb) tightly (The Merry Wives of Windsor; first use as an adverb) time-honored (Richard II) title page (can't find; seems unlikely) to torture (several; first use as a verb) traditional (Richard III; first use as adjective) tranquil (Othello; "tranquility" was an old word) transcendence (All's Well that Ends Well; first attestation of the noun) tongue-tied (III Henry VI / Julius Caesar / Troil

us and Cressida; seems first attestation of a phrase already in use) unaccommodated (King Lear) unaware (Venus and Adonis; first use as an adverb; the adjective was not yet in use) to unclog (Coriolanus, first use as a negative) unappeased (Titus Andronicus) unchanging (The Merchant of Venice) unclaimed (As You Like It; not in today's sense) uncomfortable (Romeo and Juliet) to undervalue (The Merchant of Venice) to undress (The Taming of the Shrew; seems unlikely) unearthly (Winter's Tale) uneducated (Love's Labour's Lost, seems possible) ungoverned (Richard III / King Lear) to unhand (Hamlet) unmitigated (Much Ado about Nothing) unpublished (King Lear; in the sense of "still unknown") unreal (Macbeth, first use of the negative) unsolicited (Titus Andronicus / Henry VIII; supposed first use of the form) unswayed (Richard III; not in today's sense, but "is the sword unswung?") unwillingness (Richard III / Richard II) upstairs (I Henry IV; supposedly first

 use as an adjective) urging (Richard III / Comedy of Errors; first attestation as a noun useful (several, seems already familiar) varied (Love's Labour's Lost, others) vastly (Rape of Lucrece, not present sense) viewless (Measure for Measure; means "invisible") vulnerable (Macbeth; used in today's sense) watchdog (The Tempest; first use of the phrase) well-behaved (The Merry Wives of Windsor; first known use of the compound) well-bred (II Henry IV; first use of the familiar compound) well-read (I Henry IV)

Question: Who invented over 1,700 common words including assassination, bedazzled, and eyeball?
Answer: William Shakespeare