Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers

To two fellow writers who have helped me from the start: Joseph C. Goulden, good friend and fellow author who has helped me with all of my books beginning with my first,
Think Tanks
, published in 1971, and to Robert Skole, good friend, former boss, collaborator, and idea man extraordinaire. Thanks, Joe and Bob.

Published April 23, 2014, in honor of that day in 1564 marking the sesquiquadricentennial, or 450th anniversary of the birth of William Shakespeare, now and forever the greatest neologist of the English language.
*

*
 The term
sesquiquadricentennial
was coined by John M. Morse and the staff of Merriam-Webster for the purposes of this work.

A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,

That hath a mint of phrases in his brain

—Shakespeare,
All’s Well That Ends Well

Making up words is a respectable business, occasionally blessed with wide acceptance. Whoever made up innies and outies to describe navels that are either recessed or protruding must have experienced some satisfaction.

—Dave Matheny,
Star Tribune
, Newspaper of the Twin Cities, November 6, 1988

Contents

AUTHORISM

Introduction

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X Y Z

Epilogue—Cold Comfort

Appendix: How Many Words and Phrases Did Shakespeare Actually Coin?

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Notes

A Note on the Author

Lexical Works by Paul Dickson

Introduction

The Sweet Click

Writers have long enjoyed their ability to create new words, to neologize—to write, read, and hear—what writer Arthur Plotnik, who has written on the subject of neologism in literature, calls the “sweet click of coinage” and which he terms one of the rewards of the vocation.

Early writers got to hear a lot of those clicks as they helped shape the language, beginning with
Geoffrey Chaucer
, who had a field day being the one to first leave a written record of several thousand words. The many words regarded as his coinages include
bed
,
bagpipe, Martian,
and
universe
.
Sir Thomas More
, who died in 1535, gets credit for having invented or discovered among many others—
anticipate, explain,
and
fact
.
¹
John Milton
, who died in 1674, as far as can be determined minted such terms as
impassive
,
earthshaking,
lovelorn,
and
by hook or crook.
He also coined the expression
all hell broke loose.

“Milton,” wrote critic, essayist, and Milton scholar Logan Pearsall Smith in his
Milton and His Modern Critics
, “felt himself perfectly at liberty to lay tribute on all the possible resources of the nation’s linguistic coffers, from old archaic words to the new words he created for himself out of the rags and fragments found in their recesses. For Milton often coined the words he wanted, and the
Oxford Dictionary
finds in his writings the first appearance of many words which are now familiar to us all. They may possibly have been used before, yet, like the coins of a great king, they seem to bear his image stamped upon them.”

Smith then listed his own favorite Miltonisms:
dimensionless, infinitude, emblazonry, liturgical, bannered, ensanguined, horrent, anarchy, Satanic, echoing, irradiance,
and his great chaotic word
pandemonium
.
²
According to Gavin Alexander, lecturer in English at Cambridge and fellow of Milton’s alma mater, Christ’s College, who has mined the
Oxford English Dictionary
(
OED
) for evidence, Milton is responsible for introducing some 630 words to the English language, making him that country’s greatest neologist. As explained in a 2008 article in the
Guardian,
“Without the great poet there would be no
liturgical, debauchery, besottedly, unhealthily, padlock, dismissive, terrific, embellishing, fragrance, didactic
or
love-lorn.
And certainly no
complacency.
”

Alexander’s count, which was apparently restricted to words not phrases, put Milton and his 630 neologisms ahead of
Ben Jonson
with 558,
John Donne
with 342, and
William Shakespeare
with a mere 229.
³
Such exact numbers underscores the problem of counting neologisms, because Shakespeare coined—and here’s the rub—or popularized any number of additional words depending on the source you rely on, who is doing the counting, and the criteria used.

The Bard is also credited in the
Oxford English Dictionary
as being the first to use the terms
bedazzle, archvillain, fashionable, inauspicious, vulnerable, sanctimonious
, and
outbreak
. Whether or not those words were created by Shakespeare is up for debate, but he seems to have been the first to write them down. A May 2013 search of the online
OED
came up with 1,728 words (not words and phrases, but words) for which the Bard is given credit for “first use” ranging alphabetically from
abrook
(to endure, tolerate) to
yravish
(ravish). First use is different than coined or created because it simply acknowledges that this is the first evidence of a surviving record for use of that term, and over time this number is likely to go down rather than go up as earlier printed sources are uncovered and digitized to make the search easier.

The number of Shakespearean coinages has been a matter of speculation for decades and I have reserved a small bonus section in the back of this book to discuss the Bard’s lexical box score. Numbers notwithstanding, when it comes to Shakespeare, there are a number of ways to look at his impact. According to the book
Coined by Shakespeare: Words and Meanings First Penned by the Bard
by Jeffrey McQuain and Stanley Malless, there are, for example, at least ten words commonly used in sports lingo that originate from the work of William Shakespeare. They are:
buzzer, negotiate, lackluster, undervalue, juiced, scuffle, vulnerable, rival, Olympian,
and
manager
. In
Shakespeare on Toast
, Ben Crystal rattles off these Bardisms: “Even-handed, far-off, hot-blooded, schooldays, well-respected are Shakespeare’s too, as are lonely, moonbeam and subcontract.”
⁴

It seems to go deeper than single words but also to phrases and expressions that are now part of the fabric of everyday life. As Brenda James points out in her book
The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare
, “It may well be that no educated English-speaking person goes more than (at most) a few hours without using one or more words
coined by Shakespeare
, almost certainly without knowing it.”
⁵

Since the time of the Bard, the ability to create new words or even to be the first to use them has become tougher. But some standouts along the way to the present will be featured in this book, including many words or sayings that are in common use, names that are familiar to everyone—or what Shakespeare called
household words
,
a term that makes its debut in the Saint Crispin’s Day speech in
Henry V
.