Shakespeare's English

Anchovy

Where it’s found: Henry IV Part1, Act 2, Scene 4

How it’s used:

PETO: Item, A capon, . . 2s. 2d.
Item, Sauce,… 4d.
Item, Sack, two gallons, 5s. 8d.
Item, Anchovies and sack after supper, 2s. 6d.
Item, Bread, ob.

Where it comes from: In this line of brilliant and sparkling prose that is indicative of why Shakespeare is considered the greatest writer in the English language, we see the first-ever English attestation of a Romance word.

Portuguese has a word for the same kind of fish, anchova, possibly arriving in Portugal from Genoa or Corsica. As for that, there are two possible sources of that word — either Latin apua (which comes from a Greek word that means “small fry”) or the Basque word anchu, meaning “dried fish.” [source]

Late entry is late, and the Shakespearean source of this word is a lot less interesting than a lot of the other words we use, but I think it provides an interesting example of how something that’s just a throwaway reference in one of his plays has gone on to be used in modern English without much thought.

Luggage

Where it’s found: Henry IV, Part 1, Act V, Scene IV

How it’s used:

PRINCE HENRY: This is the strangest fellow, brother John.
Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back:
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

Where it comes from: Luggage has a pretty easy etymology. The first part, lug, means… well, lug. As in, to lug something about. The suffix -age means “belonging to” or “relating to.” As for lug, it’s a Scandinavian term found in Swedish (as lugga) and Norwegian (as lugge), and originally meant to pull by the hair. So luggage literally means “that which is lugged about.”

It didn’t come to mean baggage until the 20th century.

[source 1] [source 2] [source 3]

Bloodstained

Where it’s found: Henry IV Part I, Act I, Scene III

How it’s used:

HOTSPUR: Three times they breathed and three times did
they drink,
Upon agreement, of swift Severn’s flood;
Who, then, affrighted with their bloody looks,
Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds,
And his his crisp head in the hollow bank,
Bloodstained with these valiant combatants.

Where it comes from: One of the great things about Shakespeare was how he could combine two old words to make one brand spanking new one. He did it with puppy-dog, with arch-villain, with eyeball — and now with bloodstained. (I feel like putting all of those into one sentence makes for a macabre story…)

So, where does blood come from? The bloodthirsty Anglo-Saxons gave us the word through their term blod. It has a long and storied history in other Germanic languages, popping up in Frisian, Old Norse, Middle Dutch, and Gothic, among others. In fact, its root is also responsible for the word flower in the Gothic tongue, leading etymologists to speculate that the proto-Germanic word meant “that which bursts forth.” [source]

Stained, as a noun, was much newer in Shakespeare’s day than blood. The verb was in use before that, and it appears to be a linguistic mutt. Old Norse had a word steina, meaning “to paint,” and Middle English had a word disteynen, meaning “to discolor.” The latter, in turn, came from a combination of Old French and Latin, emerging out of the word that meant “to dye,” which is also the root of the word tincture. [source]

As Ron Weasley might say, “Bloody brilliant.”