Words that Shakespeare Coined

Elbow. No, not the noun. 😉 That one has obviously been around for a while…from around 1200, as a matter of fact, in Old English. El is the length of the forearm, and bow comes from boga, which means “arch.”

Shakespeare, however, was the first to use it as a verb, which he did in King Lear, Act 4, Scene III.

KENT: A sovereign shame so elbows him: his own unkindness,
That stripp’d her from his benediction, turn’d her
To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights
To his dog-hearted daughters, these things sting
His mind so veomously, that burning shame
Detains him from Cordelia.

Shakespeare was a true master of language, being fluent in seven of them (!); he often created new words for English that came from others, but he also did this sort of thing all the time–taking a noun and turning it into a verb, or vice vera. So no need to get annoyed with people today making up words like “momming,” “adulting,” “mathing,” or the like–it’s a practice as old as language itself! And if Shakespeare can do it… 😉

Words that Shakespeare Coined

Dauntless. To understand the evolution of this word, we actually have to begin with daunt. This verb dates to the 14th century, taken from French (which is taken from Latin), meaning “to subdue or tame.” It was a word generally used for breaking or domesticating animals. An undaunted horse would be a wild, unbroken horse. In the 16th century, the word began to take on a metaphorical sense, and undaunted was applied to people who were “courageously resolute, undiscouraged.” Shakespeare was the first to add the -less suffix instead of the un- prefix. Dauntless appears for the first time in print in Henry VI, Part 3.

Do you know anyone who proves themselves dauntless?

This week begins a fun series on words that Shakespeare coined! The words themselves may or may not have a lot of interesting etymology otherwise…but they’re making this list simply because they were introduced to us by the Bard. 😉

Cold-hearted is one such word, first appearing in Shakespeare around 1600. Just a decade or so before this we saw the introduction of cold-blooded, as in “someone without emotion, lacking the usual sympathies,” to which cold-hearted is clearly related. The belief at the time was that our blood literally warmed up as we got more excited (rather understandable given that we feel flushed and hot). So naturally, words and phrases were created to capture the opposite too.

Scavenge and scavenger are another example of words whose progression surprised me. Back-formations do that to me a lot. 😉 I guess I always assumed the verb came first–first there was scavenging and then the one who did it became known as a scavenger. Nope. And in this case, I think I always assumed that the primary meaning would be applied to animals who scavenge for food. Also nope.

So apparently the noun came first, dating from the 1540s as “a person hired to remove trash from the streets.” Interestingly, though, it’s from a Middle English word for a tax collector. It traces its roots first to an Anglo-French word for “tax” and back even further to the Old English sceawian “to look at, inspect.”

The verb form didn’t come along until 1640…which is still old, of course, but not nearly so old as the noun in all its forms.

Scavenger hunt is very new to the game, not joining the fun until the 1930s.

But they ARE fun, aren’t they? Which is why I chose this word for this week. 😉 The 2021 Spring Christian Fiction Scavenger Hunt will begin on 3/18! I’ll be sharing a fun post about how to wear a hoop skirt, and there will as always be a ton of amazing giveaways in the hunt! Mark your calendars!

Zany. We probably all think of it as “comic, acting like a buffoon to entertain others.” But did you know that it was actually originally a person (so a noun) in a comedy? Yep! A zany has been a comic performer since the 1580s. But you may be wondering where the word itself came from.

Interestingly, it’s just an anglicized spelling/pronunciation of the Venitian Gianni, a nickname for Giovanni–the Italian equivalent of “John.” Much like the English “Jack,” it was just a very common name that was given to a sort of “any man” character (think “Jack of all trades”).

So, in these comedic performances the name Gianni or Zanni/Zany was given to a comedic character meant to make the hero appear in a positive light.

Doldrums. Interestingly, this is a plural word that has no singular…anymore. Once upon a time, there was indeed a singular version, and a doldrum was a “dull person.” (Dol is a variation of dull.) Over time, however, that meaning disappeared, and was replaced entirely with a similar-but-different meaning: “low spirits; a depressed or lethargic state of mind.”

So here’s the part I find fascinating. That noun came into being around 1800. I first heard it, however, in a nautical sense–the doldrums being literally without wind in your sails, something which happens especially around the equator. I always assuming that the nautical phrase came first and then was applied metaphorically to the mental state. But nope. The nautical sense came about in the 1820s, because of the state of mind the sailors were in when their ships were becalmed.

And here’s the next funny step. Sailors were so frequently in the doldroms in that particular geographic location (around the equator) that people thought that they meant the doldrums were the place. And so by the 1840s, “the doldrums” are what the calm, windless areas around the equator also came to be called. Who knew?