Shakespeare’s Linguistic Innovation Shakespeare’s Linguistic Innovation Author Katelyn Ekker Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England EncyclopediaEMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globablink Research Internship

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Intellectual copyright in this entry is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Katelyn Ekker, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. updated author respStmt. Created File.
Context

The early modern period was a time when English bloomed as a literary language, and many writers played with its possibilities. According to recent scholarly investigation, Shakespeare probably invented or coined about 500–1000 new words, usually by borrowing a word from another language like French or Latin, adapting existing English words with prefixes, or using a known word as a different part of speech. He is often credited with inventing many more words and phrases, but some of those attributions may be due to Shakespeare being over-represented in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Some examples of words Shakespeare coined include: assassination bandit courtship obscene pageantry tranquil remorseless

Techniques

One of Shakespeare’s favorite techniques was to add the prefix un to an existing word, as when Lady Macbeth exclaims, Come you spirits, unsex me here (1.5.39). He also loved to create compound words, such as describing someone as a lack-beard, or extolling the beauty of the temple-haunting martlet, sky-aspiring thoughts, or lazy-pacing clouds.

Nominalization

Shakespeare also used nouns as verbs or adjectives as nouns throughout his plays, a process called nominalization. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare parodies this technique as he allows Evans to say, I will description the matter to you (1.1.196). Another example is Prospero’s the dark backward and abysm of time (The Tempest 1.2.50). Backward is used as a noun, instead of performing its usual adverbial function.

Compounding

One example of the way Shakespeare played with compound words as an indicator of a character’s pretentiousness was in Love’s Labour’s Lost. In this play, Don Armado is a knight who loves words, and he is writing to the young King of Navarre, reporting that he has seen a servant meeting with a young woman, and says: Great deputy, the welkin’s vice-regent, and sole dominator of natureSo it is, besieged with sable-colored melancholy, I did commend the black-oppressing humor to the most wholesome physic of thy health-giving airWhereI did encounter that obscene and most preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-colored ink, which here thou viewest, beholdest, surveyest, or see'st.(1.1.218–43)

Much of this play parodies and delights in excesses in language, which Don Armado has on full display in this passage with its many compounded descriptions. Small wonder that at one stage the page Moth remarks that They have been at a great feast of languages, and stol’n the scraps (5.1.37–38). Shakespeare clearly loved that kind of feast, and it is one of the things that readers, audiences, and actors clearly also love centuries later.

Key Print Sources Crystal, David, and Ben Crystal. Shakespeare’s Words: A Glossary and Language Companion. Penguin Books, 2004. Salmon, Vivian. Elizabethan English. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, ed. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Key Online Sources Batistella, Edwin. Shakespeare’s Linguistic Legacy. Oxford University Press Blogs. 10 Apr. 2016. https://blog.oup.com/2016/04/shakespeare-linguistic-legacy/. Accessed 20 Jun. 2023. Best, Michael. Fire-New Words. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/language/puns.html. Accessed 12 Mar. 2016. Mabillard, Amanda. Words Shakespeare Invented. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. https://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/wordsinvented.html. Accessed 24 Apr. 2016.