Shakespeare's Neologisms

A "neologism" is a "new word". Some experts credit Shakespeare with coining over 1700 new words. That doesn't even count all the phrases and expressions we now use as household words. Even the term "household words" is from one of his plays - Henry V.

What did Shakespearean English really sound like?

---

Here is a wonderful site with an article about Shakespeare's new words:

https://www.litcharts.com/blog/shakespeare/words-shakespeare-invented/

Find out about some popular Shakespeare-derived phrases here:

CLICK for Shakespeare Trust site

Finally - you might have heard about the infamous "Shakespearean Insults"

CHALLENGE

1. Read the articles above for an overview. In the first site, you can explore further links.

2. Note how Shakespeare really just remixed other words to create new ones. The site explains it:

More specifically, he would create new words by:

Conjoining two words

Changing verbs into adjectives

Changing nouns into verbs

Adding prefixes to words

Adding suffixes to words

3. Play around with the Shakespeare Insult Generator from MIT https://web.mit.edu/dryfoo/Funny-pages/shakespeare-insult-kit.html or this one http://www.pangloss.com/seidel/Shaker/ or this one: http://www.literarygenius.info/a3-shakespeare-insult-generator.htm

ASSIGNMENT

1. Create your own insult from the MIT generator or the other generator sites and visualize it. Your visualization can be hand-drawn, digital...even a meme or animated GIF (you will be posting to your blog).

2. Choose a neologism attributed to Shakespeare - or one of his expressions - and match with an illustration of some sort. Your illustration should add or clarify meaning.

3. Create your OWN new word using the remix strategies listed above from the first website. You can create a "portmanteau" using parts of two or more existing words, for example. Or, you can make an existing word into another part of speech, sort of like Facebook did with "Like" (you will then have to provide context by using it in a sentence).

4. After you have created your personal neologism, visualize it in some way (again, analog or digital).

All these will be posted as "Blog Post #2: Shakespearean Neologisms" on your brand new shiny blog.