“Household Words”

“Household Words”

Common and Uncommon Words Coined by Shakespeare

A—F | G—M | N—R | S—Z

gallantry (Shakespeare meant “gallant people”)
garden house
generous (Shakespeare meant “gentle,” “noble,” “fair”)
gentlefolk
glow (as a noun)
to glutton
to gnarl
go-between
to gossip (Shakespeare meant “to make oneself at home like a gossip-that is, a kindred spirit or fast friend”)
grass plot
gravel-blind (“almost stone-blind”)
gray-eyed
green-eyed
grief-shot (“sorrow-stricken”)
grime (as a noun)
to grovel
* gust (as “a wind-blast”)
half-blooded
to hand (Shakespeare meant “to handle”)
to happy (“to gladden”)
heartsore
hedge-pig
hell-born
to hinge
hint (the noun)
hobnail (the noun)
hodge-pudding (“a pudding of various ingredients”)
* homely (in the sense of ugly”)
honey-tongued
hornbook (“alphabet tablet”)
hostile
hot-blooded
howl (the noun)
to humor
hunchbacked [“bunch-back’d” in earliest edition]
hurly (“commotion”)
to hurry
idle-headed
ill-tempered
ill-used
impartial
to impede
implorator (“solicitor”)
import (the noun: “importance,” “significance”)
inaudible
inauspicious
indirection
indistinguishable
inducement
informal (Shakespeare seems to have meant “unformed” or “irresolute”)
to inhearse (“load into a hearse”)
to inlay
to instate (Shakespeare, who spelled it “enstate,” meant “to endow”)
inventorially (“in detail”)
investment (Shakespeare meant “a piece of clothing”)
invitation
invulnerable
jaded (Shakespeare seems to have meant “contemptible”)
juiced (“juicy”)
keech (“solidified fat”)
kickie-wickie (derogatory term for a wife)
kitchen-wench
lackluster
ladybird
lament
land-rat
to lapse
laughable
leaky
leapfrog
lewdster
loggerhead (Shakespeare meant “blockhead”)
lonely (Shakespeare meant “lone”)
long-legged
love letter
to lower (Shakespeare meant both “to frown, to threaten” and “to sink, to decline”)
lustihood
lustrous
madcap (as an adjective)
madwoman [earlier than OED]
majestic
malignancy (Shakespeare meant “malign tendency”)
manager
marketable
marriage bed
marybud (“bud of a marigold”)
mewling (“whining, whimpering”)
militarist (Shakespeare meant “soldier”)
mimic (the noun)
misgiving (the noun: “uneasiness”)
to misquote
mockable (“deserving ridicule”)
money’s worth [“money-worth” dates from the fourteenth century]
monumental
moonbeam
mortifying (the adjective)
motionless
mountaineer (Shakespeare meant “mountain-dweller”)
to muddy
multipotent (“most-mighty”)
multitudinous
mutineer