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Shakespeare's plays are the earliest known written source for many English words and phrases, from “star-crossed” to “green-eyed monster”. But being first found in Shakespeare is not the same as being invented by him, and many such words turn out to have been used by others first.

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The popular figure of about 1,700 words invented by Shakespeare rests largely on the Oxford English Dictionary, whose first edition cited him as the earliest user of many words. The scholar Jonathan Hope has pointed out why: the Victorian readers who collected quotations for the dictionary read Shakespeare more thoroughly than any other writer, so he often got the credit for words that can also be found in others. Later research, helped by searchable collections of early printed books, has found older examples of many of them. What remains is still remarkable. He turned nouns into verbs, added prefixes and suffixes freely and joined words in new ways, and dozens of his phrases, such as “salad days” and “sea change”, are still in everyday use more than four hundred years later.

Türkçe oku
Pek çok İngilizce sözcük ve deyim, yazılı olarak ilk kez Shakespeare'in oyunlarında görülür: Talihsiz âşıklar için kullanılan “star-crossed” ya da kıskançlığı anlatan “green-eyed monster” gibi. Ama ilk kez onda görülmek, Shakespeare'in uydurduğu anlamına gelmez; böyle sözcüklerin birçoğunu başkaları daha önce kullanmıştı.

Shakespeare'in 1.700 kadar sözcük icat ettiği yolundaki yaygın rakam, büyük ölçüde Oxford İngilizce Sözlüğü'ne dayanır: Sözlüğün ilk baskısı, birçok sözcüğün ilk kullanıcısı olarak onu gösteriyordu. Shakespeare araştırmacısı Jonathan Hope bunun nedenine dikkat çeker: Sözlük için alıntı toplayan Viktorya dönemi okurları Shakespeare'i başka hiçbir yazarı okumadıkları kadar dikkatle taramıştı. Bu yüzden başka yazarlarda da bulunan sözcükler sık sık ona yazıldı. Sonraki araştırmalar, dijital ortamda taranabilen eski basılı kitap arşivlerinin de yardımıyla, bu sözcüklerin birçoğu için daha eski örnekler buldu. Geriye kalan yine de dikkat çekicidir. Shakespeare isimleri fiil olarak kullandı, sözcüklere serbestçe ön ek ve son ek getirdi, sözcükleri yeni biçimlerde birleştirdi. “Salad days” (toy gençlik yılları) ve “sea change” (köklü değişim) gibi onlarca deyimi, dört yüz yılı aşkın süre sonra bile İngilizcede her gün kullanılıyor.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Influence of William Shakespeare
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