Bill Bryson has an eye-opening account of Shakespeare's inventive use of language in his book, Shakespeare:
Quote: "He coined -- or, to be more carefully precise, made the first recorded use of -- 2,035 words...
"Among the words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary. excellent, eventful. barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany and countless others (including countless)."
Bryson also says: "Not everyone appreciated this creative impulse. When Robert Greene [a contemporary of Shakespeare] referred to him as 'beautified by our feathers', he was mocking a Shakespeare neologism in beautified."
Together with "beautified" and the other words mentioned above, some of our "un-" words made their first appearance in Shakespeare's writings, including unmask, unhand, unlock, untie and unveil..
As Bryson says, some of Shakespeare's words never caught on, such as undeaf, untent, exsufflicate, bepray and insultment. But about 800 of his words are still used today.
Bryson goes on to say that Shakespeare's real gift was as a phrasemaker. Among the phases well known today that were apparently first coined by him are vanish into thin air, play fast and loose, bag and baggage, be in a pickle, the milk of human kindness, blinking idiot, with bated breath, pomp and circumstance, foregone conclusion, and many others.
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Quotes and paraphrases from p. 112-114 in Bill Bryson's Shakespeare.
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