How Many Words Did Shakespeare Invent? - Book Riot

The majority of Shakespeare’s plays were not published during his lifetime — the first major collection of his work was the First Folio, published in 1623. Without this folio edition, we wouldn’t have the majority of Shakespeare’s plays in circulation today. After the publication of the First Folio, three subsequent Folios were published in 1632, 1664, and 1685. In contemporary times, we have countless editions of Shakespeare plays, with some being geared towards performers and others more tailored to the classroom.

How to Invent a Word

When we say that Shakespeare invented a word, it tends to mean that his work was the first written documentation of a word. The original volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) were published between 1884 and 1928, and they included tons of Shakespeare quotes. Since Shakespeare’s work was so dominant in the OED, over 1,700 words were believed to be the first time that the word was used in the English language. However, this is a disputed figure.

Book Deals Sign up for our Book Deals newsletter and get up to 80% off books you actually want to read. Sign Up By signing up you agree to our terms of use.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. ✓ You’re subscribed!

Before you go, sign up for these other great newsletters and never miss a beat!

Subscribe to Selected No Thanks

The first documented use of a word is what’s important to lexicography, the process of compiling a dictionary. In Elizabethan England, only 30% of men and 10% of women were thought to be able to read and write. Words commonly in use in conversation could not always make it into the written record. So when we say that Shakespeare invented words, it’s not that he was throwing new gibberish at his audience that they had never heard before. There were many words he used that were common in speech, but it took Shakespeare’s plays to preserve them.

Shakespeare scholar David McInnis explains the OED’s attribution as a kind of bias towards their preferred literary masters: “The Complete Works of Shakespeare was frequently raided for early examples of word use, even though words or phrases might have been used earlier, by less famous or less literary people.” The OED was assembled by a group of people drawing on the knowledge they had together, so it didn’t have the best peer review process.