Chapter 7

Shakespearean Vocabulary
Unlike grammar and discourse patterns, there is no general rule for vocabulary. An alphabetical glossary is the
best way to maintain all Shakespearean vocabulary. Glossary writers mostly focus on words where either the
meaning has changed (naughty no longer means ‘evil’) or the word itself has changed (we no longer use finical)
Difficult Words
1. Difference Vs. Difficulty: Some difficult words that are not different. (see chap.1, the translation myth,
“problematic vocabulary”)
 the use of names such as Phoebus (a name from Greek Mythology) presents an encyclopedic difficulty
not a linguistic one. This was a common name then.
 Shakespearean texts or expressions in foreign languages (French, Latin, etc.) At the time, most people
learned French and Latin in school.
2. Difficulty is a spectrum, ranging from words that hardly need to be glossed at all to those that cannot be
understood without a glossary. In the case of the latter, there is no other choice but to learn them starting
with the most frequent ones first. Footnotes, Long lists at the end of a book, or glossaries are not the best
way to learn these words because there is no context, and glossaries separate words such as “uncle” and
“aunt” where it would make sense to study the two together. The best way would be to study the words in
context, in clusters, synonyms, antonyms, and to explore the whole range of uses of a new word as soon
as we come across it.
3. False Friends:
a. words where the meaning has slightly changed over time. These would rarely cause a probem of
understanding.
 Glass means “looking-glass” / Meat means the general sense of “food”
b. several hundred cases where the meaning has changed so much that it would be highly misleading to
read in the modern sense. The term comes from foreign-language teaching, where find examples such
as French demander, which does not mean ‘demand’. In all instances of false friends, we need to pay
careful attention to the context, which usually helps to eliminate the intrusion of the irrelevant modern
meaning.
 Heavy = sorrowful / humorous = moody / sad = serious
c. In a number of cases, the old and modern senses of a word were both active in Shakespeare’s time.
Both senses are needed to fully convey the meaning of what is happening in a scene. (‫)ایهام‬.
 I sent him home Bootless. Bootless both means “without boots” but also “useless and pointless”

 Directors and actors mostly ignore ‘false friends’. There is a scene in Twelfth Night: If this fall into thy
hands, reuolue. Regarding the meaning of revolve most directors and actors make the actor look puzzled
and then have him affectedly turn round. For Shakespeare, the primary meaning was ‘consider, ponder,
meditate’.

Easy Words
1. Words that are still used in some contexts such as poetry or comic archaism.
 visage, pate, knave, wench
2. words where the formal difference is too small to obscure the meaning. In these cases, enough context
was provided to clarify the meaning.
 afeard (‘afraid’), scape (‘escape’), ope (‘open’)
3. many words and phrasal verbs whose elements are well known today but their combination is not
 bedazzle, dismasked, unpeople, rareness, and smilingly
  press down (‘overburden’), speak with (‘speak to’), and shove by (‘push aside’).
4. the cases of conversion, or functional shift, where a word belonging to one part-of speech is used as a
different part-of-speech. (most common a noun is used as a verb)
 Lord Angelo Dukes it well in his absence

Metrical Constrains
1. Some words are different solely because Shakespeare needed an extra syllable to meet the demands of the
metre, but they do not cause a problem for understanding the meaning. Like below vastie Deepe instead
of Vast Deep.
I can call Spirits from the vastie Deepe.
Could Shakespeare not just have used a two-beat rhythm word that means vast instead? NO. The only available
words were “immense” and “enormous” which were too long or “huge” or “large” which didn’t convey the
meaning of vast. He liked his creation and used it in three other plays. He also used the same formula on other
words. (Steepy, plumpy)
2. His choice to use “vantage” instead of “advantage” or “scape” instead of “escape” is also solely due to the
location of the word in the line. At times, he even used both versions within the same text, proving further
how this change is only to fit the syllabus count.
3. Names are also altered, in Pericles (play), Pericles’s counselor is sometimes referred to as “Helycanus”
and sometimes as the shorter version “Helicon”. This is a stylistic choice and no semantic issue.

Old and New words

Shakespeare’s period, like all others, is not linguistically homogeneous. In Modern English we sense that some
words are current, some old, and some new. People refer to the older usages as ‘obsolete words’ or ‘archaisms’,
the new usages as ‘coinages or ‘neologisms’. It is easy to spot an arriving usage, because its novelty is noticed
and usually attracts some degree of comment. Usages which are becoming obsolete are rarely commented upon,
and tend to pass away in dignified silence.
In early modern English there was a lot of dynamic change. The consequences of renaissance were present in the
language. the period is remarkable for its lexical inventiveness and experimentation, to which Shakespeare made
his own major contribution. From a modern perspective, it is difficult to spot the obsoletes and neologism of the
past. Example: in many scenes of Pericles we see wight (‘person’), and eke (‘also’) which were considered archaic
by the Shakespearean audience. As for neologisms, some characters actually tell us that they are dealing with new
words and usages. Example: a character is described as “A man of fire-new words”.
there was a certain way of speaking or writing that used difficult words commonly. People often tried to use these
difficult words but got them wrong because they weren't used to speaking or writing like that. Shakespeare was
not fond of pretentious language since several of his major characters poked fun at this this type of language.

Coinages
Most Shakespearean coinages can be easily spotted. They are idiosyncratic by all standards. Example: exsufflicate
‘puffed up’ or anthropophaginian ‘cannibal’. However, we can be easily deceived. people often try to guess the
meanings of old or unusual words based on what they think makes sense. For example, they might guess that
"unaneled" means not having received the last sacraments, which is correct. The word "disappointed," which
means unfurnished or unprepared, not feeling let down. People often miss these less exciting words when trying
to understand old language, focusing instead on more dramatic ones like "accessible," "domineering," and
"indistinguishable."
Another case is where the coinage is essentially a new part of speech. Example: Shudder as a verb is from the
fourteenth century. As a noun it is first recorded in the play Timon of Athens.
It can be difficult to notice when a familiar word is used in a new way. For example, the word "angel" originally
meant a divine messenger, but Shakespeare used it to describe a lovely person in "Romeo and Juliet." Similarly,
the word "wicked" originally meant morally bad, but Shakespeare used it to mean mischievous or sly in "As You
Like It." The meanings of words are more important than the words themselves, and it speculates about how many
new meanings Shakespeare may have introduced to the English language.
Shakespeare’s word creation was exploratory. He invented the same word more than once around the same time.
Example: he invented two words from “annex” which were “annexment” and “th’annexions”.
creating a word is one thing, determining its meaning is another. And with some coinages we can see the gradual
way in which a new meaning slots into the existing semantic network. Example: unfledged. In the middle ages,
fledge meant birds whose feathers were fully developed. In the second half of the 16th century, it was used as a
verb meaning acquiring feathers. Shakespeare saw potential : if birds grow feathers, then why not an analogous
process in humans? And in Henry IV we have the Prince as one ‘whose Chin is not yet fledg’d’. the adjectivial
use of “unfledged” Is largely Shakespearean. From birds, Shakespeare then applies the word t people, and
develops the sense of ‘immature’ or ‘inexperienced’. And from there, it is a short step to the sense ‘characteristic
of youth’seen in one of his plays.
People often see inventiveness in a language as just a matter of creating new words. But it is much more than this.
It is also a matter of creating new senses from existing words. Shakespeare, evidently, does both – and the latter
much more commonly than the former.

Clusters
We encounter novel words every now and then. They are by nature scattered and in a few places. If an author
uses too many, the language will become so unfamiliar. On the other hand, there is no linguistic rule which says
that coinages must be restricted to single instances. Sometimes, some intricate thoughts required more than one
invented word; Shakespeare’s inventions often appear in clusters of two or three. (the book shows an example
where in the first 8 lines all vocabulary is fairly easy and lines 9 and 10 have 5 inventions)
It is this tendency for coinages to cluster that is part of the reason why comprehension varies so dramatically: we
suddenly encounter islands of difficulty which force us to the glossary or notes.
The classical vocabulary is grandiose. The epic characters need a suitably heroic way of talking, and this is
appropriately reinforced by their grand words. However, the words are so dramatic that they draw attention to
themselves and thus to the gap between words and actions. This passage points out that it's not just the words that
look unfamiliar that make a speech or writing unique. Even familiar words can take on new meanings, adding to
the novelty of the language being used.
 Proposition: from the 14th century it meant ‘as a proposal for discussion’ but shakes pare uses it to
mean ‘an offer’. It is a usage which never survived.
 Design: meant a ‘plan’, ‘scheme’, ‘project’ but Shakespeare used it as ‘aim’ or ‘intention’
 Repetitions
When authors invent words that are appropriate, they tend to reuse them. Shakespeare sometimes uses a coinage
twice in quick secession and then never again.
sometimes a word is used in two different ways across different plays, and this repetition can provide a small hint
about when the plays were written.

Single Posts
By putting Shakespeare’s inventions together, interesting patterns can emerge. He was fond of using the prefix
un- in imaginative ways to create new combinations. With adjectives (uncomfortable), adverbs (unaware), nouns
(undeserver) and already existing words (unaware, unwear). Some 30% of the coinage pattern ‘un- + verb’ are
just in four plays.
Is there any difference in Shakespeare’s usage, pre- and post- 1600? Indeed there is. Using the OED’s dates, there
are twenty-four instances in the twenty plays pre-1600, with seven plays not containing any instance at all. Post-
1600 there are thirty-eight instances in eighteen plays, with only four not having any examples

Collocations
Shakespeare loved to break normal collocational rules. Example: ‘candied Tongue person’ meaning a sweet
talking person. It is instances like these that help his style shine through. Collocations are especially interesting
when they relate to a word which is itself a neologism, such as auspicious. Shakespeare is in fact responsible for
both the first and the second citations for this word in the OED. (‘auspicious mistris’ / auspicious = favorable
mistris = mistress). Auspicious is somewhat a more creative adjectival collocational substitution compared to
other options of the time which were literal and predictable. (example: worthy, low, great)

Perspective
As prior mentioned, a text approached with modern intuition and knowledge would be easily understandable. At
the opposite extreme, there are extracts where the difficulty is evident. However, later in the speech there will be
clearer passages that clarify what is happening.

David Crystal: “People who argue that Shakespearean vocabulary is unintelligible and inaccessible tend to quote
the hard words and ignore the easier ones. It is always a good practice to read the whole of a speech before
worrying about the difficulties found in a part of it.”