The English language owes a great debt to Shakespeare. He invented 1,700 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, verbs into adjectives, connecting words never used before together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising completely new words. Words like amazement, critical, eventful, generous, laughable, and suspicious are a few of these words. Some of Shakespeare’s words can be foreign to us, but it is important to understand the meaning of his words in order to read his writings. If ever we do not know the meaning or part of speech of a word, we only need to ask Mr. Webster (or Dictionary.com) to find the answers we seek.
Just a few of the words Shakespeare created...