Shakespeare (coming soon)

This page is under construction. Meanwhile, see Brewer 2012, ‘Shakespeare, word-coining, and the OED‘, Shakespeare Survey, vol 64, ed. Peter Holland, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 345-357, downloadable on our Library page, and – for Shakespeare’s influence on the chronological shape of OED – our pages on 1500-1699 in OED1/2 and 1500-1699 in OED3.

Schäfer 1980 was the first work properly to explore the implications of the OED’s fondness for Shakespeare. Jonathan Culpeper has two current projects on Shakespeare’s language, in part using OED data (see Work in progress on our Bibliography page), and more generally, David Crystal has written widely on Shakespeare’s language (see http://www.davidcrystal.com/books-and-articles/shakespeare [accessed 15 August 2019]).

As of June 2019, OED3 had reduced OED1’s/OED2’s tally of words first used by Shakespeare from around 2,000 to 1,467.

Last updated on 18 September 2019