That's what wordsmiths are for! Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for contributions to the English language courtesy of the Bard.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 "That's indeed where I thought you the highest poet of my esteem and a writer of plays that
00:05 capture my heart." "Oh I am him too." Welcome to Ms Mojo and today we're counting down our picks
00:12 for contributions to the English language courtesy of the Bard. However, we're excluding idioms and
00:19 aphorisms such as "wild goose chase" and "all that glitters isn't gold." "Tell me what you're
00:26 thinking." "I was thinking about Shakespeare." Number 10, puppy dog. Shakespeare's plays and
00:35 sonnets include the first ever recorded uses of over 1,700 words. These days we take many of them
00:43 for granted like puppy dog. "His name is Astro and he's just a puppy dog, a baby puppy dog." In
00:51 Shakespeare's play King John, puppy dog is uttered by Philip the Bastard as he reacts to a boldly
00:57 worded proposal from the citizen of a besieged city. Philip says, "Here's a large mouth indeed
01:03 that spits forth death and mountains rocks and seas, talks as familiarly of roaring lions
01:12 as maids of thirteen do of puppy dogs." In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare famously asked, "What's
01:19 in a name?" suggesting that a name doesn't affect the quality of an object. However,
01:24 with the noun puppy dog, we think he managed to make dogs even more adorable. "Look, two puppy
01:31 dogs kissing." Number nine, hot-blooded. In his wordplay, Shakespeare would synthesize new words
01:39 by taking two words and combining them such as he did with hot-blooded. "Sammy the butcher,
01:46 gotta be careful honey, he is hot-blooded." This compound word first appeared in Act 2 of King
01:52 Lear where the titular character says, "Why, the hot-blooded France who dourly took our youngest
01:58 born." Cold-blooded had been coined just a few years before. Hot-blooded was a nice contrast
02:04 that was a colorful way of suggesting passion. Perhaps the most famous application of the word
02:11 is in the classic 1970 song by Foreigner. Number eight, scuffle. To invent a word, sometimes all
02:21 Shakespeare had to do was take an existing word and reappropriate it into a different part of
02:27 speech. For example, taking a verb and turning it into a noun or vice versa. "Fight, fight, fight,
02:33 scuffle, scuffle, scuffle." This is what he did with the word scuffle in Antony and Cleopatra,
02:39 which opens with Philo bemoaning Antony's infatuation with the Egyptian queen. "Captain's
02:45 heart which in the scuffles of great fights have burst the buckles on his breast, renegs all temper."
02:50 Before that play, scuffle was only a verb, but Shakespeare counted on his audience to
02:56 intuitively pick up on the meaning of the word's new use. "Scuffle, struggle, you get my point."
03:06 Number seven, eventful. One common trick Shakespeare used was to take an existing word,
03:11 add a suffix that no one ever had previously applied to the word,
03:16 and voila, you've got a new word. One such example is eventful. "How was work today?"
03:22 "Eventful." The word was coined in As You Like It in the famous monologue from Jacques Ruis that
03:30 opens with, "All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their
03:36 exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts." The monologue ends with, "Last
03:45 scene of all that ends this strange eventful history, this second childishness." No doubt
03:57 you've used the word eventful yourself to describe the nature of a day or occasion.
04:02 "How was the rest of the evening?" "It was eventful." "Eventful? Wow, okay."
04:09 Number six, laughable. This is yet another example of Shakespeare taking an existing
04:15 word and adding a suffix to derive a new concept. "It's laughable."
04:19 Laughable comes from The Merchant of Venice, where Salerino, who's one of the friends of
04:25 the main character Antonio, describes strange fellows, some who, "laugh like parrots at a
04:31 bagpiper and others have such vinegar aspect. They'll not show their teeth in way of smile,
04:39 though nest or swear the jest be laughable." Nowadays, laughable is used less to describe
04:45 a jest as worthy of laughter and more to dismiss something as ludicrous. "The idea that someone
04:51 like that could operate under my very nose is laughable. Well, you all know what laughter
05:01 sounds like." Number five, hint. Shakespeare based the word hint on the Middle English word
05:06 hinten, which meant to tell or to inform. "Don't you think your art teacher would want the
05:13 privilege of seeing it? Hint, hint, hint." The word is used twice in Act One of Othello by the
05:19 titular character. The very first usage is when he tells the Duke of Venice, "It was my hint to
05:25 speak." And the second is when he says soon after, "Upon this hint I spake." His future wife, Des
05:31 de Mona, has given him the hint that his stories of dangerous and daring deeds are the way to his
05:38 heart, a hint he gladly follows. It feels pretty fitting the word hint is Shakespearean since it
05:45 implies subtlety while being intellectually puzzling. "What's your name?" "Greg." "A little
05:52 hint. FBI asks for your name, you give the whole name." Number four, fashionable. The word
05:58 fashionable appears in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, published in 1609 but probably written
06:05 in 1602. "Yes, but it's not fashionable." "Fashionable? Is fashion such a serious consideration?"
06:13 "Among people who have nothing more serious to consider." The play is a tragic love story set
06:18 during the Trojan War. Addressing Achilles, Ulysses compares time to a "fashionable host
06:24 that slightly shakes his parting guests by the hand and with his arms outstretched as he would
06:29 fly grasps in the comer." The idea captures the fickle nature of fashions, which come and go over
06:37 time. Shakespeare was such a trendsetter that he gave us our word for trendsetters. "I am a
06:43 fashionable bitch." Number three, disturbed. Shakespeare came up with this word in what might
06:49 be his very first publication, the 1593 poem Venus and Adonis. "His wife still lives in Fitzboro.
06:57 She's...
07:03 disturbed." In the poem, Adonis is trying to mind his own business and just wants to go hunting,
07:09 but Venus, the goddess of love, is infatuated with him and wants him to return her affections.
07:15 Describing Apollo, the bard wrote, "And with his bonnet hides his angry brow, looks on the dull
07:21 earth with disturbed mind." Shakespeare takes the word "disturb," which at the time was only a verb,
07:27 and then makes an adjective by applying the word to describe Adonis's mind,
07:32 thus coming up with a new way to call someone troubled. "But I'm disturbed. I'm depressed.
07:39 I'm inadequate. I got it all." Number two, misquote. From "quote," it was a small jump
07:46 to "misquote," but nonetheless a very useful one. "You misunderstand, misquote, and misrepresent."
07:52 The word appears in the history play Henry IV, Part I, when Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester,
07:58 tells Sir Richard Vernon, "Look how we can, or sad or merrily, interpretation shall misquote
08:03 our looks, and we shall feed like oxen at the stall, the better cherished still the nearer death."
08:08 In this case, misquote doesn't mean quoting written or spoken text inaccurately, but rather
08:14 the misconstrue or misinterpret. Other new words from this play's sequel, Part II and Part III,
08:20 include "dauntless," "bandit," and "jaded."
08:23 Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about
08:33 our latest videos. You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
08:38 If you're on your phone, make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
08:44 Number 1. Gossip Gossip comes from the Old English word
08:49 "godsib," meaning "godparent." In the Middle English, it came to denote a familiar acquaintance.
08:55 Shakespeare used the word "gossip" in several different plays, giving it a new life as a verb.
09:05 In the Comedy of Errors, likely written in the 1590s, Solonus, Duke of Ephesus, exclaims,
09:12 "With all my heart I'll gossip at this feast."
09:16 In All's Well That Ends Well, the gentlewoman Helen remarks,
09:19 "With a world of pretty, fond, aduptious christenedoms that blink in stupid gossips."
09:26 Shakespeare recognized such interaction as human nature and gave the audience their fill. That's
09:32 why he studied and celebrated after all these years. The next time you spill the tea with your
09:38 friends, you're carrying on a proud literary tradition. Parting is such sweet sorrow,
09:48 but before we go, what's your favorite Shakespeare work? Let us know in the comments.
09:53 Do you agree with our picks? Check out this other recent clip from Ms. Mojo,
10:05 and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos.