ANCHORED IN HUMOR
Hall of Splash
String 5
The Oxford English Dictionary reached its 90th anniversary in 2018.
Yeah, I missed celebrating. Even so, dedicating this story is birthday bums for it.
It was not always possible to search for any word in the world on our magical smartphone, abracadabra.
Additionally, we struggled in an era where we legally hunted, which did not conclude in the cave man’s cave. It was investigating the words in the dictionary, like learning how to make fire by rubbing stones. Some of us even got a challenge when we were young, asking us to track down and gobble the dictionary words.
Compiling the Oxford English Dictionary was a massive crowdsourced project involving 70 people working for over 70 years to finish.
Even after the significant groundwork in the English language was done by Shakespeare. He invented over 3,000 of our common words by changing nouns into verbs, changing verbs into adjectives, connecting words never before used together, adding prefixes and suffixes, and devising words wholly original. Yeah! Exactly, he worked as a hotshot on the terms. Maybe If he were present during the compilation phase, 70 years would have rounded up in exactly 12 months.
Shakespeare was familiar with seven foreign languages and often quoted them directly in his plays. His vocabulary was the largest of any writer, at over twenty-four thousand words.
When he sneezed, saying, God bless me, he, without a complete period, went on with the same term in his other seven languages. While speaking, he had great difficulty with when to stop and when not to stop.
Phrases Shakespeare Invented
“All that glitters is not gold.”
Shakespeare invented this phrase to be cautious of the thieves who could have cut his left ear to his gold hoop, which he wore as a style statement in one ear.
He used to finish his conversations with this idiom often.
“As good luck would have it.”
Shakespeare was a wise businessman who became a very wealthy man with an extensive real estate portfolio. He earned through a scheme that he invented modernized slavery by forming a joint-stock company with his actors. Shakespeare took the overarching share in the company’s profits and made a royalty for each play penned. Since he played a crucial role that nobody could blame him for his winnings under the table.
This idiom was a natural ego booster that he used to say, staring at himself in the mirror.
“Break the ice.”
Shakespeare put a curse on his grave.
Shakespeare penned a curse for his grave, daring anyone to move his body from that final resting place. His epitaph was:
Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
Although it was common practice to dig up bones from previous graves to make room for others, Shakespeare’s tomb remains intact. After this curse, nobody decided to be a daredevil by touching his tomb. Nobody wanted his resting place in the horror of giving birth to the demon in the drained body of Shakespeare spirit.
During his birthright, Shakespeare rightly quoted this phrase, “Dare you to try and break the ice.”
“In a pickle.”
Copyright didn’t exist in William Shakespeare’s time. As a result, there was a flourishing trade in copied plays. To help counter this, actors got their lines only once the show was in progress — often in the form of a cue, someone backstage whispered them to the person shortly before he was supposed to render them.
In this way, Shakespeare kept everyone under his control, making people feel trapped in a pickle.
“It’s Greek to me.”
It was illegal for women and girls to appear in the theatre of Shakespeare’s life; all-female acts went written for the boys. The textual matter of some plays like Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra refers to that.
Shakespeare used to start taunting before the boys were allowed to complain; he used to go around pinching their bums in saying, “It’s Greek to me.” To make them mentally strong on playing the female character.
“Cold comfort”
Candles were costly at the time of Shakespeare, so they were only used for emergencies, for a short time. Most writers wrote in the daytime and socialized before the sun sets. There is no indication that William Shakespeare was any different from his contemporaries.
Before sleeping to get mentally detangled in the dark, he pulled out his laces and then tried to find the proper holes. He always called it “Cold Comfort.”
“Devil incarnate”
Suicide was a subject of sensitivity in the Elizabethan era. During this period, both the Church and the State took a strict stance on Suicide, seeing it as a mortal sin, bound up with deep despair and demonic pride. The word “suicide” did not appear in the English language a long time after Shakespeare’s death. It was referred to as “self-murder” with suicide survivors prosecuted.
There were 13 suicides in the works of Shakespeare. In the meantime, number 13 had already won his black omen medals.
Shakespeare was to justify his standing on double crime. He said it’s “Devil incarnate.” I have nothing to play in it how the number 13 & Suicides has gone in symphony. But in reality, the self-murder committed in showing was much more than number 13 as the whisperer backstage on dialogues ended up attracting mosquitoes in his oral cavity & concluded gulping, swallowing & chewing several of them.
The other attack on me Suicide was the immortal end to show they go to nirvana & enjoy divinely at the hands of angle, bathing in milk bath & riding on a bull wearing red collar without getting him teased.
To put it into perspective, the Oxford English Dictionary has credited Shakespeare with introducing almost 3,000 words to the English language. Finally agreeing on where it took them 70 years to create the OED, they would have rounded it up in 30 years.
Yet, I have dedicated my one wall to Shakespeare. Where I have written the 3000 words, I fold my hands daily. In saying, “You’re a genius accidentally dropped creating these words to keep you from getting caught up in shit & furthermore concluded up gaining fame.”
