Shakespeare as inventor of new words

[Joel S. Berson]

ArtsEmerson (Boston) is hyping its presentation of "The Merchant of
Venice" -- worth hyping, I imagine, with F. Murray Abraham as Shylock
-- with an email message to ticketholders.  One paragraph reads:

Brush up your Shakespeare
Prepare thyself for sometimes hard-to-follow Shakesperian dialogue
with these 80 words often used in
<http://www.pbs.org/shakespeare/educators/handouts/prf-lp_shakesconversations1.pdf>"Shakespearean
Conversations". Careful listening can reveal familiar sayings or
phrases that were actually coined by the Bard himself!

(I do think some must have been coined by himself -- the question is, which?)

Disappointingly, although this list does not claim to limit itself to
"Merchant", it does not explain the "desert" of Arden.

Joel

At 4/8/2011 10:22 AM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>Of course, this number will diminish as the revised OED covers the
>part of the alphabet it has not yet reached.  The better research
>available to the revised OED, particularly the ability to search
>Early English Books Online, is, I assume, significantly diminishing
>Shakespeare's list of coinages.
>
>Fred
>
>
>
>________________________________________
>From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
>Charles C Doyle [cdoyle at UGA.EDU]
>Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 10:11 AM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: Shakespeare as inventor of new words
>
>Here we go again:  Yahoo News posts the revelation that Shakespeare,
>when he couldn't think of a word, just make one up.  Specifically
>1,600 words.  As shown in the OED.
>
>http://whoknew.news.yahoo.com/?nc&vid=24811671
>
>--Charlie
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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