Sunday, July 11, 2010

Thanks Shakespeare!


For the Love of Books is my very own weekly Sunday meme dedicated to the wacky, weird, and wild world-wide-web finds related to the world of books. Topics can be anything ranging from unique bookcases, sculptures of books, and odd bookstores, to interesting uses for books, book quotes, bits of book news, etc. I love web-surfing and I have come across so many ideas that the possibities for this meme are nearly endless! If you would like to join in the fun, snag the image on the left and post the link your specific blog post in comments so that others can read about your internet find!

Most of us have read at least one of Shakespeare's many works, but how many of us realize the impact that Shakespeare had on the ever-evolving language of English? His body of work added over 1700 words to our modern language "by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original." If anything, this validates the right to continue inventing new words to add to our language with the glee and freedom of a three-year-old! (Perhaps my toddler is influencing my behavior a bit.) Here are a collection of some of those words for your viewing pleasure:

academe     accused     addiction     advertising     amazement

arouse     assassination     backing     bandit     bedroom

beached     besmirch     birthplace     blanket     bloodstained

barefaced     blushing     bet     bump      buzzer

caked     cater     champion     circumstantial     cold-blooded

compromise     courtship     countless      critic     dauntless

dawn     deafening     discontent     dishearten     drugged

dwindle     epileptic     equivocal      elbow     excitement

exposure     eyeball      fashionable     fixture     flawed

frugal     generous     gloomy     gossip     green-eyed

gust     hint     hobnob     hurried     impede



For more information about the impact of Shakespeare on modern-day language, visit Words Shakespeare Invented.

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