Tuesday, 23 April 2013

Happy 449th Birthday, Master Shakespeare!


Today is the 449th birthday of not only the greatest playwright who ever lived, but also the greatest poet. William Shakespeare is the most accomplished English writer of all time, by far the world’s most produced dramatist, and the finest wordsmith to ever pen a word in the English language.
He invented more words than most people even know. There are at least 1,500 different words and phrases that don't appear anywhere prior to the Bard of Avon putting them on paper. When he got stuck trying to think up a word, the man just made his own!

The following words and phrases  were first coined by William Shakespeare:

WORDS
PHRASES
amazement
apostrophe
assassination
bloody
consanguineous
courtship
critic
domineering 
fashionable
freezing 
generous
gloomy
laughable
lonely
obscene
pious
quarrelsome 
suspicious
well-bred

A dish fit for the gods (Julius Caesar)
All our yesterdays (Macbeth)
All's well that ends well (title)
As merry as the day is long (Much Ado About Nothing)
In a better world than this (As You Like It)
Break the ice (The Taming of the Shrew)
Brevity is the soul of wit (Hamlet)
For goodness' sake (Henry VIII)
Jealousy is the green-eyed monster (Othello)
It was Greek to me (Julius Caesar)
Make a virtue of necessity (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)
Much Ado About Nothing (title)
Neither rhyme nor reason (As You Like It)
A sorry sight (Macbeth)
Stony hearted (I Henry IV)
Spotless reputation (Richard II)
The world's my oyster (Merry Wives of Windsor)





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