Approximately how many words did William Shakespeare contribute to Modern English?
It is estimated that William Shakespeare used 20,000 words in his literature. However he is accredited for 1,700 of those words being added to the English language and denoted in the Oxford English Dictionary. Poets.org describes Shakespeare's "strongest influence on the English language" to be his diction.
More Info:
www.poets.org
What are your thoughts on this subject?
6 Comments
chuckidesantis
Did you know the phrase "in drag" came from Shakespeare? When he wrote his plays, all parts were played by males. His notation for a part played by an actor as a female was "dr. a. g. (dressed as girl).
William Laughlin
chuckidesantis,
The term originated as British theater slang in the 19th century and was used to describe women's clothing worn by men. Today, many prominent drag artists are still people who identify as men and present themselves in exaggeratedly feminine ways as part of their performance, and are known as drag queens.
Nadin
chuckidesantis, I knew it
Shelley Durocher
TSH, Drag and cross dressing are not generally interchangeable terms. Usually, the word drag is used in reference to a performance, while cross dressing (an outdated term at any rate), refers to someone who, in their everyday life, just likes to wear clothing usually worn by a member of the opposite sex.
TSH
chuckidesantis, Thank you. I often wondered why the word drag was used as a term for malt cross dressing.
Ken Jackson
Many of those claimed were not actually contributed by him - he changed existing nouns into verbs and existing verbs into adjectives.