Linguistic innovation

Shakespeare said it first: 10 words coined by the Bard

Rumor has it that William Shakespeare coined over 1,700 new English words or, at least, he was the first to put them in writing. If you have ever heard this fact, it might make you think of sophisticated-sounding terms like sanctimonious, equivocal, or radiance, all invented by the Bard. But many of the words we use in everyday life have Shakespearean origins, no matter how mundane they might seem. Let’s explore Shakespeare’s mark on our daily vocabulary.

First recorded in: A Midsummer Night's Dream

When Shakespeare first used the word ‘bedroom’ (around the 1580s), the common way of referring to a space intended for sleeping was ‘chamber’ or ‘bedchamber’. Why did the bard choose a different word then? He was not referring to what we now understand as a bedroom. In Act 2, Scene 2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, when Lysander asks Hermia for "bed-room", he is asking to lie next to her in the bed. The change from ‘space in the bed’ to ‘a room intended for sleeping’ occurred a few decades later, and the current use of 'bedroom' was set around the 1610s.

First recorded in: A Midsummer Night's Dream

We commonly use this word to describe the behavior or attitude of someone very confident and bold, and its first recorded use was not that different, though it bore a negative connotation. In Act 3, Scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck uses the word "swaggering" to mockingly describe the rustic manners of the actors rehearsing a play. A few years later, Shakespeare used "swaggerer" in Act 2, Scene 4 of Henry IV, Part 2, to describe the noisy, boastful, and brawling Pistol. Nowadays, ‘swagger’ is most of the time used with a positive connotation.

First recorded in: Coriolanus

If Shakespeare ever heard Kelly Clarkson singing "doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone," he would think the verse redundant, because he coined the word ‘lonely’ to mean ‘alone’. In Coriolanus (Act 4, Scene 1), the titular character says "I go alone, like to a lonely dragon, that his fen makes fear'd and talk'd of more than seen". While Coriolanus used the word to compare himself with a solitary or isolated creature, ‘lonely’ evolved to mean ‘sad for lack of company’ in the early 19th century.

First recorded in: Macbeth

While linguists believe that ‘assassine’ was already in use in the 1570s, ‘assassination’ was first recorded in print around 1605 in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. A word of Arabic origin (from hassassin, ‘hashish-user’) that pejoratively described a group of mercenary killers, it had entered English through the Italian assassino. In Macbeth (Act 1, scene 7), the main character, while contemplating killing the king, refers to the potential murder as an ‘assassination’.

First recorded in: Troilus and Cressida

While in modern times we understand fashionable as ‘following the latest trends’, Shakespeare’s use was slightly different. In Act 3, scene 3 of Troilus and Cressida, the character Ulysses describes time as "a fashionable host", using the term to mean ‘popular’. While its meaning has changed slightly since then, the association with something popular remains.

First recorded in: Venus and Adonis

Was Shakespeare the first to record this word? Yes and no. In 1575, a scholar named William Patten had recorded the term ‘eye ball’, but Shakespeare was the first to use it as a single word in the 1593 poem Venus and Adonis, "Look in mine eyeballs, there thy beauty lies". How did people refer to the eyeball before that? They simply called it the ‘eye’.

First recorded in: Julius Caesar

Historians are certain about this one: the word ‘generous’ was not coined by Shakespeare, but he was responsible for making it popular and cementing its meaning as ‘freely giving’. From the Latin generosus (‘of noble birth’, ‘honorable’), the term had entered English through French with that original meaning. Shakespeare had used it as ‘honorable’ or ‘high ranking’ in Love's Labour's Lost (c. 1594), but he later used it in 1599's Julius Caesar (Act 2, scene 3) to describe the unselfishness and altruism of Caesar, who had made provisions for every Roman citizen in his will.

First recorded in: The Taming of the Shrew

Before Shakespeare’s time, English people certainly undressed, but they used words like unclothe, strip, or the Old English unscrydan to describe the action. The French dresser (´to arrange’, ‘put in order’) entered English in the 14th century, and shifted from general to personal order in the following century, eventually being used solely for clothes. Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (c. 1590) contains the first written record of the opposite verb, ‘to undress’, in its prologue: "Madam, undress you, and come now to bed."

First recorded in: Titus Andronicus

Although ‘vary’ (from the Latin variare, ‘to change or make different’) was already in use during the 1500s, Shakespeare is widely considered the first to record its adjectival form with the meaning ‘something that contains many different things’. In 1591’s Titus Andronicus (Act 3, scene 1), the character Marcus compares the voice of his now-mute niece Lavinia with a bird that sang "sweet varied notes".

First recorded in: Love’s Labour’s Lost

The Greek kritikos, meaning ‘able to judge’, was already used in English before Shakespeare’s time, but it referred to skilled judges or literary correctors. In Act 3, scene 1, of Love’s Labour’s Lost, Berowne, initially cynical about love but having fallen for Rosalind, describes his former self as "A critic, nay, a nightwatch constable", making this the first recorded use of the word to mean someone who points out flaws or looks upon others with contempt.

WEIRD FOSSILS

10 Of The Weirdest Extinct Animals That Roamed The Earth

Image: David Clode

Earth is a weird place. Many living creatures already seem out-of-this-world -or at least ill-conceived - but what about those that are extinct? Millions of species have roamed the planet, and although many are similar to what we are used to, many more are exceedingly strange.

Join us as we go deep into our evolutionary past and uncover some of the weirdest animals that ever lived!

Image: André Ganzarolli Martins, CC BY-SA 4.0

The peaceful glyptodon was an enormous mammal (roughly the size of a small car) that was related to modern-day armadillos and sported a similar armored exterior. This giant herbivore lived during the Pliocene, around 3.2 million years ago. Although glyptodon and humans coexisted for a relatively short period of time, human hunters are said to have used the hardened shells as shelter.

Image: Werner Kraus, CC BY-SA 4.0

Maybe weird is not the right word to describe this spine-chilling monster, but it would have certainly been a sight to behold. Megalodon, which means "big tooth" in ancient Greek, was the largest shark to ever swim in Earth’s oceans. Luckily, it went extinct around 3.6 million years ago, because it could reach 67 feet in length and its dagger-like teeth were 7 inches long!

Image: PaleoEquii, CC BY-SA 4.0

If this nightmarish creature was conceived as some sort of alien monster in a low-budget sci-fi movie, we would still say it was ludicrous. But the aptly named Tully Monster was definitely real, and it was weirder than you think. Based on the fossil record, tullimonstrum was an aquatic creature with a (mostly) tubular shape, eyestalks, and a long proboscis with sharp teeth at its end. Even paleontologists find it exceedingly weird, so much so that its exact classification has been the subject of a long-held controversy among scientists.

Image: Seth Wickham

Afraid of millipedes? Maybe skip this one, then. Arthropleura was a genus of massive millipedes that could reach lengths of almost 8 feet. These terrifying creatures of the lower Carboniferous were, however, very similar to modern arthropods, likely scurrying around forests and consuming decomposing organic matter. The reason so many bugs grew to immense sizes during this time was likely related to higher levels of oxygen present in Earth’s atmosphere, and the lack of large terrestrial predators.

Image: Frank Lehmann, CC BY-SA 4.0

As their name suggests, terror birds were apex predators. In fact, the largest predators in South America during the Cenozoic. These giant flightless birds could grow to be 10 feet tall, only ate meat, and could easily crack skulls or shells with the terrible strength of their pointed beaks. Fortunately, terror birds are thought to have become extinct at least a million years before humans arrived on the continent, though some smaller subspecies may have survived until more recently.

Image: Jan Kopřiva

As if Colombian rainforests weren’t dangerous enough, imagine an almost 50-foot-long snake stalking its prey amongst the dense foliage. Titanoboa were a larger (and way heavier) relative of modern anacondas, and the largest snakes to ever roam Earth. Although at first they were thought to be an apex predator, the shape of their skulls suggests that titanoboa likely preferred to prey on fish.

Image: CSIRO, CC BY 3.0

A fish so rare that only one specimen of the species was captured for scientific study in 1802, on the shallow coastal waters of Tasmania, the smooth handfish is on the cuter side of this list - sort of - with four hand-like appendages that it used to walk on the seafloor. Australian researchers hilariously describe its whimsical appearance as "dipping a toad in some brightly colored paint, telling it a sad story, and forcing it to wear gloves two sizes too big." Since the smooth handfish was never seen again in two centuries, it is deemed long extinct, but several other species of handfish survive in southern Australia.

Image: Han Zeng, CC0

If the name is not a clue as to the weirdness of this extinct species, behold its description: a mostly featureless worm-like creature with ten pairs of legs, a set of rigid spines on its back, and a blobby head. However, since its real appearance is difficult to reconstruct, some scientists have even weirder interpretations of hallucigenia, claiming that the legs were actually tentacle-like appendages that may have had independent mouths.

Image: Dustin Humes

Did you know that dragonflies grow larger in enriched oxygen atmospheres? Well, during the oxygen-rich Carboniferous (300 million years ago), a giant relative of modern dragonflies soared the skies. Meganeura could have a staggering wingspan of over 2 feet, and they were adapted to prey on other insects in open habitats. Scientists think that, as oxygen levels plummeted in the following geological periods, these huge insects went extinct, as their larger body size was no longer an advantage.

Image: Mike Arney

As recently as 300,000 years ago, true giants roamed southern Asia’s thick bamboo forests. Nearly 10 feet tall and potentially weighing as much as 600 pounds, this gorilla-like ape is thought to have been mainly herbivorous, surviving on barks and twigs. Although some people have speculated that surviving members of the Gigantopithecus genus could be behind the alleged sightings of Bigfoot, most scientists dismiss these theories, as the species has been extinct for thousands of years.