“Household Words”
“Household Words”
Common and Uncommon Words Coined by Shakespeare
- satisfying (as an adjective)
- * savage (as “uncivilized”)
- savagery
- schoolboy
- scrimer (“a fencer”)
- scroyle (“wretch”)
- scrubbed (Shakespeare meant “stunted”)
- scuffle
- seamy (“seamed”) and seamy side (“under-side of a garment”)
- to secure (Shakespeare meant “obtain security”)
- self-abuse (Shakespeare meant “self-deception”)
- semblative (“resembling”)
- shipwrecked (Shakespeare spelled it “ship-wrackt”)
- shooting star
- shudder (the noun)
- silk stocking
- silliness
- to sire
- skimble-skamble (“senseless”)
- skim milk [in quartos; “skim’d milk” in the Folio]
- slugabed
- to sneak
- sneap (“snub”- as a noun and as a verb)
- soft-hearted
- spectacled
- spilth (“something spilled”)
- spleenful
- sportive
- to squabble
- stealthy
- stillborn
- to subcontract (Shakespeare meant “to remarry”)
- successful
- suffocating (the adjective)
- to sully
- superscript (Shakespeare meant “address written on a letter”)
- superserviceable (“more serviceable than is necessary”)
- to supervise (Shakespeare meant “to peruse”)
- to swagger
- tanling (“someone with a tan”)
- tardiness
- time-honored
- title page [earlier than OED]
- tortive (“twisting”)
- to torture
- traditional (Shakespeare meant “tradition-bound”)
- tranquil
- transcendence
- trippingly
- unaccommodated
- unappeased
- to unbosom
- unchanging
- unclaimed
- * uncomfortable (in the sense “disquieting”)
- to uncurl
- to undervalue (Shakespeare meant “to judge as of lesser value”)
- to undress
- unearthly
- uneducated
- to unfool
- unfrequented
- ungoverned
- ungrown
- to unhand (as in the phrase “unhand me!”)
- to unhappy
- unhelpful
- unhidden
- unlicensed
- unmitigated
- unmusical
- to unmuzzle
- unpolluted
- unpremeditated
- unpublished (Shakespeare meant “undisclosed”)
- unquestionable (Shakespeare meant “impatient”)
- unquestioned
- unreal
- unrivaled
- unscarred
- unscratched
- to unsex
- unsolicited
- unsullied
- unswayed (Shakespeare meant “unused” and “ungoverned”)
- untutored
- unvarnished
- * unwillingness (in the sense “reluctance”)
- upstairs
- useful
- useless
- valueless
- varied (as an adjective)
- varletry
- vasty
- vulnerable
- watchdog
- water drop
- water fly
- well-behaved
- well-bred
- well-educated
- well-read
- to widen (Shakespeare meant “to open wide”)
- wittolly (“contentedly a cuckold”)
- worn out (Shakespeare meant “dearly departed”)
- wry-necked (“crook-necked”)
- yelping (as an adjective)
- zany (a clown’s sidekick or a mocking mimic)