Word invention

In a book called How Shakespeare Changed Everything, Stephen Marche argues that ole Billy is the single most important figure in history. You can listen to him defend his dubious argument here.

One area where Shakespeare had a fair amount of influence is in word creation. I learned from Bill Bryon’s book The Mother Tongue that, according to apparently careful calculations, Shakespeare used 17,677 words in his writings, of which at least one tenth had never been used before. Many of them are still in common use. Among the words Shakespeare gave us are these: barefaced, critical, leapfrog, monumental, castigate, majestic, obscene, frugal, radiance, dwindle, countless, submerged, excellent, fretful, gust, hint, hurry, lonely, summit, pedant, and 1,685 others. Here’s a longer list.

You can’t see me behind my keyboard, but I’m brimming with jealousy right now. I want to be the most important figure in history.

But I’m up for the challenge, and there’s still time. 2,500 weeks or so, to be precise. That means I just need to introduce new words into perpetuity at a pace of 1/week and then I will eventually unseat that chump as the most important goofy white person of all time.

Here are a few to get us started:

Sideboobed (v.) – shown private, alluring things that are not exactly what you want or expect.
Misepiphany (n.) – an epiphany where you goofed up; realize that, in fact, you are dumb.
Fleecedom (n.) – a place with too many white people wearing fleece.

Fellow bloggers: I expect to see these words littered all over the Internet in the coming days, otherwise I’ll never link to your ass again.