As Shakespeare wrote his plays and poems he came up with words that we now use today in our everyday language. 1700 of our common words today were invented by Shakespeare just by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives and connecting words no one ever thought to put together. He also started to use prefixes and suffixes and devising words wholly original. Shakespeare is credited for the introduction of almost 3,000 words into the language by the Oxford English Dictionary. After 400 years, there are still subtle difficulties in interpreting Shakespeare's meaning. His vocabulary, gathered from his works, numbers upward of 17,000 words. There are a number of Shakespeare's words that have shifted meanings or dropped.
Bibliography
"Shakespeare's Influence." The New York Times Company. Online. Internet. 2007. Available: http://shakespeare.about.com/library/weekly/aa042400a.htm
"Shakespeare's Grammar." Shakespeare's Resource Center. Online. Internet. 1997-2007. Available: http://www.bardweb.net/grammar/grammar.html
"The Language of Shakespeare." Shakespeare's Resource Center. Online. Internet. 1997-2007. Available: http://www.bardweb.net/language.html
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