20 Words We Owe to William Shakespeare

20 Words We Owe to William Shakespeare

I would not rely on this to be accurate. I have researched Shakespeare's alleged neologisms in the past and have often found their origins to range from "debatable" to "decidedly not Shakespeare."

For example, the word "uncomfortable" is of debatable origin (although Shakespeare seems to have been the first to use it in its modern meaning), and "new-fangled" is definitely NOT a Shakespeare neologism. The latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary cites several uses of this word before Shakespeare's time, even one from 1533 with completely modern spelling and meaning.