Neil writes:
Did you know (don't you just hate it when people say that, and when they rush up to you saying guess what, guess what?) that Shakespeare used around 17,000 words in all his plays, and that about one tenth of them he made up himself? Presumably we're talking about adding endings, as opposed to say, inventing a whole word like fgtho'd (to rhyme with Orange), but still, I give the man a lot of respect for that. In fact it inspires me to enter this fine and dandy rhyming verse competition. I have a good knowledge of rhymes, as I knew someone called Gabriel Cheng, whom I nicknamed Table Leg on the basis that it rhymes with his name. It does you know. Try harder. Believe.
Actually, I'm a linguistics minor, and this stuff fascinates me (as does she and me, but we'll save that for another grammar lesson). However, it's a common fallacy that Shakespeare made up 10% of his written vocabulary. Most scholars of the subject would suggest that nearly all of the words he used were already in use. He, however, was the first to commit them to print. Makes sense, considering that some of the people using these words were not of a literate class. Where it gets really interesting is that certain words and expressions correspond to the various classes represented by characters in his plays. (See also Faulkner and Twain, who utilize this same accuracy in dialect and regional expression.) So, you're partially right, and 99.9% of the population would probably assert that WS did indeed make up 10% of his vocabulary. However, since I have an exam coming up on this subject, I thought I'd share my two pence. Belle and Seb content? I can't think of any words in their songs that rhyme with orange. But I like it when I mishear "be honest" as "be us" in Get Me Away, I'm Dying. Luff, Kristen +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list please mail "sinister@majordomo.net". To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to "majordomo@majordomo.net". For list archives and searching, list rules, FAQ, poor jokes etc, see http://www.majordomo.net/sinister +---+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" +---+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+