While he introduced many words that are still in use today, there are some that never caught on. Let’s take a look at some lesser known words Shakespeare invented.
This list is the Shakespearean equivalency of Gretchen Wieners trying to make “fetch” happen.
Aside from his most overrated quotes, Shakespeare is routinely credited with contributing “at least 1,700 words” to the English language, including words as seemingly common as bedroom, alligator, eyeball, lonely and kissing.
I was initially going to make list out of those, but in researching them, I found out it’s really hard to confirm that Shakespeare actually was the first to use them.
So instead, I decided to tackle a much less popular Shakespeare language topic: The words he created that sputtered and died. That was much easier to fact check; there aren’t a ton of disputing accounts on the first time the word “bubukles” appeared in print.
Word’s Shakespeare Invented That Never Got Famous
So here are 11 words coined by Shakespeare that failed to make any sort of splash on the future of the English language.
1 | dispunge (Antony and Cleopatra)
This is a verb for when it’s pouring rain, as if a giant sponge is being squeezed on you. Taking it further, in the only context the word has ever been used in history, Shakespeare uses it metaphorically (“the poisonous damp of night dispunge upon me”) — it never stood a chance.
2 | co-mart (Hamlet)
Hamlet is a source of many words invented by Shakespeare that are on this list. This play also holds evidence that he is probably gay as well, but let’s not get into that and focus instead on co-mart.
This word described joint bargains — like buying a Chromecast and getting two months of Hulu Plus free, to take it as anachronistically far from Shakespeare’s era as possible.
Here’s how it’s used in Hamlet:
By the same comart,
And carriage of the articles design’d,
His fell to Hamlet.
This word did such a poor job catching on, it’s been removed from most modern versions of Hamlet and replaced by “covenant” — apparently people just assume it was a typo. I also checked, and it’s not the inspiration for Kmart, although they are a great place to find something rotten.
3 | congreeted (Henry V)
Since then my office hath so far prevail’d3010
That, face to face and royal eye to eye,
You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me,
If I demand, before this royal view,
What rub or what impediment there is,
This is a pretty useful word; a verb meaning to exchange hellos and other small-talk pleasantries. And then, I assume, everyone kind of standing there awkwardly.
4 | smilets (King Lear)
I like this word a lot; it describes one of those attempted half-smiles you give when you aren’t really happy but get the social cue to smile. Of all the words on this list, smilets is really the top one that could’ve had a chance; so like everything else that didn’t survive King Lear, let’s blame his daughters.
Not to a rage. Patience and sorrow strove
Who should express her goodliest. You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears
Were like, a better way. Those happy smilets
That play’d on her ripe lip seem’d not to know
What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence
5 | friended (Hamlet)
Yes, Facebook has completely co-opted this word, but not in the way Shakespeare used it in Hamlet. There, the context means friendship (“to express his love and friending to you”) — not adding a friend to your tally.
He *does* use “friended” in the modern way in Measure for Measure and Cymbeline, but those plays are like Friendster and Classmates.com to Hamlet‘s Facebook.
This is his pardon, purchased by such sin
For which the pardoner himself is in.
Hence hath offense his quick celerity
When it is borne in high authority.
When vice makes mercy, mercy’s so extended
That for the fault’s love is th’ offender friended.
6 | immoment (Antony and Cleopatra)
This is a fancy, poetic Shakespeare adjective for “unmomentous,” which also appears to not be a word. Apparently he was really filling a void with this one.
Parcel the sum of my disgraces by
Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,
That I some lady trifles have reserved,
Immoment toys, things of such dignity
As we greet modern friends withal; and say
Some nobler token I have kept apart
7 | bubukles (Henry V)
This describes blotches on the face, or, most likely, adult acne. It feels more descriptive than “pimples,” but also more Yiddish-y.
His face is all bubukles and whelks and knobs and flames o fire;
and his lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire,
sometimes plue and sometimes red,
but his nose is executed, and his fires out.
8 | rooky (Macbeth)
Apparently there’s some high level linguist battle over what Shakespeare means by “rooky.” Some think it’s just describing a tree that a lot of a type of crows called rooks have landed on.
I couldn’t find what the others think it describes, and I can’t really meet them halfway on anything else; the line from Macbeth is “Light thickens; and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood.” As someone once said and then the Internet attributed to Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Anyway, here’s an excerpt with the word.
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood:
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
9 | palmy (Hamlet)
Palmy is an adjective based off the concept of victory being something you hold in your palm. So palmy means “victorious and flourishing” — not “home to lots of palm trees” which is how I’m pretty sure it’s used in all the real estate listings for $2 million dilapidated shacks here in L.A.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.
10 | infamonize (Love’s Labor’s Lost)
This word describes making someone go from famous to not famous, which is sort of a lost concept today thanks to an unholy trinity of nostalgia, reality TV, and social media. Once you’re famous, you stay famous.
Clow: Faith vnlesse you play the honest Troyan, the poore
wench is cast away: shee’s quicke, the childe bragges in her
bellie already: tis yours.
Brag: Dost thou infamonize me among potentates:
Thou shalt die.
Clow: Then shall Hector be whipt for Iaquenetta that is
quicke by him, and hangd for Pompey that is dead by him.
11 | mirable (Troilus and Cressida)
This isn’t pronounced like miracle with a “b”; it’s ostensibly pronounced “myre-uh-bul.” It’s a short form version of “admirable,” making it an unlikely cousin to the popular Internet-coined term “‘Murica.”
Of all the words Shakespeare invented, this one doesn’t need to go mainstream since there is already another word for it which is, well, more admirable to pronounce.
AJAX:
I thank thee, Hector.
Thou art too gentle and too free a man.
I came to kill thee, cousin, and bear hence
A great addition earnèd in thy death.
HECTOR
Not Neoptolemus so mirable—
160 On whose bright crest Fame with her loud’st “Oyez”
Cries “This is he”—could promise to himself
A thought of added honor torn from Hector.
—Helpful websites: Theatre History, Perseus Digital Library