Wednesday Words: Shakespeare Shares

How many people can say that they coined phrases that will still be in use over 400 years after they introduced them?  Only a handful, I would think.  But I have discovered that William Shakespeare is to credit, or blame, for numerous phrases and proverbs in our English language.  Here are just a few:

•                    Eaten out of house and home (Henry V, Part 2)

•                    Fair play (The Tempest)

•                    Foul play (Love’s Labours Lost)

•                    Good riddance (Troilus and Cressida)

•                    Hair stand on end (Hamlet)

•                    Heart’s content (Henry VI and The Merchant of Venice)

•                    In a pickle (The Tempest)

•                    Jealousy is the green-eyed monster (Othello)

•                    Love is blind (Merchant of Venice)

•                    One fell swoop (Macbeth) (by the way, fell = savage or cruel like felon)

•                    Pound of flesh (The Merchant of Venice)

•                    Salad days (Antony and Cleopatra)

•                    Send packing (I Henry IV)

•                    The short and the long of it (The Merry Wives of Windsor)

•                    Though this be madness, yet there is method in it ("There's a method to my madness") (Hamlet)

•                    'Tis high time (The Comedy of Errors)

•                    Wear my heart upon my sleeve (Othello)

•                    What the dickens (The Merry Wives of Windsor) (dickens = hell)

•                    Wild-goose chase (Romeo and Juliet) 

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There are other sayings that Good Ol’ Bill popularized, even if they weren’t his own, such as “It’s Greek to me” (Julius Caesar) and “All’s well that ends well” (All’s Well that Ends Well).

I had no idea how many commonly used expressions Shakespeare is responsible for!  I have tried to imagine another person who has had such an influence on English.  The only book I can think of that would rival The Complete Works of Shakespeare for infusing words and phrases into the English language is the Bible – which is actually a collection of sixty-six books written by forty authors.

How have Shakespeare’s words become so popular in our society?  How is it that a 16th/17th century poet and playwright still exerts so much sway over our language today?  I have to wonder if any other single person will ever match Shakespeare’s impact.

What Shakespearean phrases do you most like?  If you want to see more, here are a few websites to check out:

www.pathguy.com

www.shakespeare.about.com

www.nosweatshakespeare.com

Did you know that many of our expressions emanated from the Bard’s writing?  Can you think of anyone else who has been a significant contributor to our language?  And while we're at it, what's your favorite quote or play from William Shakespeare?

Julie Glover, Word Lover

I LOVE words!  I don’t necessarily mean that I enjoy talking.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.  But I love the sumptuousness of language.  I relish words, lyrics, accents, sarcasm, idioms, proverbs, and all things language – even punctuation and grammar.

Some people think this is weird.  When you list among your must-reads Strunk & White and Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss, a few eyebrows are bound to furrow with puzzlement.

Where did this love come from?  I suppose some of it is inborn.  However, I credit my father as well with tapping into that sense of wonder at the richness of words.  He loved puns, poems, prose, debate, and dialogue.  He quoted Shakespeare’s “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more . . .” more times than I can count.  He told jokes like, “How you say ‘Turn off the light’ in French?  Darken de john!”  He invented a speech that he cited regularly: “Within the vicissitudes of time, one realizes the eschatological considerations . . .” that went on from there and made little sense but introduced words that I was finally curious enough to look up.  He also knew grammar in a way that most people didn’t; for instance, why one should say “It is he” rather than “It is him.”

My obsession deepened with books, books, and more books.  There are so many quotable lines in the classics, like Don Quixote and Sense and Sensibility.  But just as much, how wonderful is a Dr. Seuss book – any Dr. Seuss book!  And in between were all the terrific authors I’ve devoured who put their precious efforts into finding the right combination of words and phrases to communicate a deep truth, a feeling I relate to, or a humorous observation.

It’s rare to find others who enjoy these things as much as I – unless, of course, I’m hobnobbing with fellow writers!  Are we a strange breed?  Other writers (and, to be fair, English teachers) are the only people I’ve talked to who relate to spending five full minutes choosing the next word in a sentence or pondering for a while whether a comma or a dash would be more appropriate.

The beautiful truth about writing is that there are SO many words in the English language (over 600,000 in the Oxford English Dictionary) available to us, there are numerous punctuation choices to be made (with rules and flexibility), and language can communicate the unity of human experience.  It is this awe I have for language that makes me consider myself Julie Glover, Word Lover.

What do you love about words?  About the English language in particular?  How does your love of words enhance your writing?