Shakespeare's works contain the first recorded use of approximately 1,700 English words, including critical, frugal, excellent, barefaced, assassination, and countless.
Shakespeare Invented 1,700 Words We Still Use Today
William Shakespeare wasn't just a playwright. He was a one-man linguistic revolution who permanently rewired the English language. Scholars estimate he introduced approximately 1,700 words into written English—terms we still use daily, centuries after he first scratched them onto parchment.
The Word Factory of Stratford
When Shakespeare needed a word that didn't exist, he simply made one up. Assassination. Bedroom. Lonely. Generous. These weren't borrowed from Latin or French—they were fresh inventions, cobbled together from existing roots or transformed from other parts of speech.
He turned nouns into verbs with abandon. Before Shakespeare, you couldn't "elbow" someone out of the way or "gossip" about your neighbors. He gave us "swagger" and "lackluster," "obscene" and "sanctimonious."
A Numbers Game
The exact count is hotly debated. Some scholars claim over 2,000 coinages; others argue for a more conservative 1,700. The challenge? Shakespeare might not have invented every word—he may have simply been the first to write down terms already floating through Elizabethan streets.
But here's what's remarkable: even the conservative estimate means he contributed more new vocabulary to English than most people use in a lifetime.
Words That Stuck
Consider a handful of his greatest hits:
- Critical — now essential to every film review and performance evaluation
- Frugal — your budget-conscious friend's favorite word
- Barefaced — still used to describe shameless lies
- Countless — the irony of inventing a word meaning "too many to count"
- Excellent — Bill and Ted would approve
He also gave us "eyeball," "uncomfortable," "unreal," and "zany." The man was prolific.
Why Shakespeare?
Part of his success was timing. English was in flux during the late 1500s—the language was hungry for new vocabulary as Britain's world expanded through trade and exploration. Shakespeare fed that hunger.
But mostly, he was fearless. Where other writers might fumble for an existing phrase, Shakespeare welded prefixes to roots, verbed nouns, and trusted his audience to follow along. They did. We still do.
The next time you call something "fashionable" or describe a "gloomy" day, you're speaking Shakespeare. He didn't just write Hamlet and Macbeth—he wrote the words we think in.