“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