|
Study Break:
William
Shakespeare and the English Language
William Shakespeare
(1564-1616) The vocabulary of the average American is approximately
10,000 words. The vocabulary of an intelligent, present-day individual
contains an estimated 17,000 words. American Journalists are said
to have vocabularies of up to 20,000 words. The King James Bible,
written in 1611, contains approximately 8,000 different words.
The 37 plays
of William Shakespeare contain approximately 34,000 different words.
There are 1,700 words for which the Oxford English Dictionary can
trace no usage prior to Shakespeare's plays including such diverse
words as:
- addiction
- amazement
- anchovy
- birthplace
- cheap
- cold-blooded
- countless
- critical
- dawn
- day's work
- defeat
- downstairs
- employer
- epileptic
- eventful
- eyeball
- farmhouse
- fashionable
- fortune-teller
- frugal
- hostile
- hunchbacked
- laughable
- love letter
- majestic
- misquote
- moonbeam
- obscene
- ode
- outgrow
- overpower
- pious
- priceless
- puke
- puppy-dog
- on purpose
- retirement
- schoolboy
- shipwrecked
- shooting
star
- skim milk
- successful
- undress
- unreal
- upstairs
- watchdog
- well-educated
- yelping
You Could Be
Quoting Shakespeare and Not Know It!
Shakespearean
Phrases Used in Common English
- The Merchant
of Venice
"With bated breath…" "a pound of flesh" "The quality of mercy
is not strain'd
- Othello
"…jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster,…"
- Macbeth
"The be-all and the end-all-" "Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." "Knock, knock! Who's there…"
"…th' milk of human kindness…" "Out, damned spot!"
- Julius Caesar
"Beware the Ides of March." "…the noblest Roman of them all" "Yond
Cassius has a lean and hungry look, "Friends, Roman countrymen,
lend me your ears! I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."
- Henry IV,
part 1
"The better part of valor is discretion,"
- Henry IV,
part 2
"He hath eaten me out of house and home,…."
- King Lear
"More sinn'd against than sinning." "How sharper than a serpent's
tooth it is To have a thankless child!"
- Richard
III
"A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!"
- A Comedy
of Errors
"…neither rhyme nor reason?"
- Hamlet "The
lady doth protest too much,…" "Sweets to the sweet,…" "Hoist with
his own petard,…" "I must be cruel only to be kind." "Neither
a borrower nor a lender be," "…to thine own self be true," "There
are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt
of in your philosophy." "Alas poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio,…"
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." "To be, or not
to be, that is the question:"
- Romeo and
Juliet
"…wild-goose chase,…" "Parting is such sweet sorrow," "A pair
of star-crossed lovers…" "But soft, what light through yonder
window breaks?" "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
- The Merry
Wives of Windsor
"…the world's mine oyster,"
- As You
Like It
"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his
time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages."
- The Tempest
"…We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
- A Midsummer
Night's Dream
"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
|
|
