Where it’s found: The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene I
How it’s used:
SALARINO: Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time:
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper,
And other of such vinegar aspect
That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
Where it comes from: I find it very… laughable that one of Shakespeare’s problem plays coined the term laughable. (What, you don’t come here for my incredibly lame puns? I am agog, aghast, and other sorts of fancy words!)
With that out of the way, laughable is a compound, made up of two parts: laugh and the prefix -able.
Laugh is Old English, and was originally onomatopoetic. The Anglo-Saxon word for laugh was hlæhhan. This is related to a number of other Germanic words that look like someone just hit their keyboard in an attempt to coin a word. The pronunciation was originally lack, but here we are with our yuck-yuck word laff. [source]
-able, on the other hand, came to us from the Romans; Latin had two suffixes for words that meant “a capacity to do,” -ibilis and -abilis. Interestingly enough, in English native words get tagged with the suffix -able (hence, laughable), while more obviously Latin words get stuck with -ible (e.g., horrible, crucible, etc.) [source]
Where it’s found: As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII
How it’s used:
JACQUES: Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Where it comes from: This particular monologue is also where English gained the word puking. It’s a favorite of mine, and probably one of Shakespeare’s most famous.
Eventful was definitively a Shakespeare word; there’s no record of it being used other than in As You Like It until it cropped up in the dictionary. It comes from two words (obviously), event and the suffix -ful.
Event meandered its way into English from Middle French and Latin, where the word was eventus. It meant “an occurrence or accident” but also “fortune” and “fate.” It’s a stem of the word evenire, “to come out, happen, or result,” which is also the root of the word venue. [source]
The suffix -ful is, surprisingly or not, derived from the word full. It’s Old English, where it meant “completely, perfect, entire, utter,” and also “full.” It’s Indo-European roots also means the word is related to the word plenary. [source]
Where it’s found: “A Lover’s Complaint”
How it’s used:
Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season’d woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish’d woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.
Where it comes from: I’ve covered a lot of Shakespeare’s plays on this blog, but never his poetry. Fortunately, he was just as prolific in his poems as he was in his scripts, and so we have our first example from a poem: launder.
Launder is actually a contraction of the word lavender, which in French (as lavandier) meant “washer” and not the flower. The French stole the word from Latin, lavandria, ultimately coming from the word lavare, “to wash.” So the word launder is related to the word lave. The sense of “money laundering” didn’t arise until the 1960s. [source]
Where it’s found: Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V, Scene I
How it’s used:
ADRIANO DE ARMADO: Arts-man, preambulate, we will be singled from the
barbarous. Do you not educate youth at the
charge-house on the top of the mountain?
Where it comes from: Shakespeare borrowed educate (which seems relevant given my reasons for not posting much over the next two weeks) from Latin. It’s initial meaning, beyond a formal sort of training, was “to bring up children.” It’s root word is educere, meaning “bring out” or “lead forth.”
Interestingly enough, educate is a cousin of the word duke; ducere in Latin means “to lead.” [source]
Where it’s found: Titus Andronicus, Act V, Scene III
How it’s used:
MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Tear for tear, and loving kiss for kiss,
Thy brother Marcus tenders on thy lips:
O were the sum of these that I should pay
Countless and infinite, yet would I pay them!
Where it comes from: Titus Andronicus is probably Shakespeare’s first tragedy, written sometime between 1588 and 1590, and it is also one of his bloodiest. It was popular in his lifetime, but as time wore on it grew to become less respected than his other works. So I guess you could say it’s one of his…countless bloodstained works. (Yes, I did just use twoof the Bard’s coined words in one sentence. I’m moving at a thought a minute here, try and keep up.)
Countless is made of two parts. Count comes from Old French, where they used conter to mean “to add up,” but also “to tell a story.” It is ultimately derived from the Latin word computare, which is the root of the word computer. Interestingly enough, the verb has a completely different origin than the noun, i.e., the title of nobility. [source]
I’ve covered the origins of the suffix -less before, but for review:
it means lacking, and it comes from Old English -leas. Other Germanic languages have similar terms (-loos in Dutch, -los in German, etc.) [source]
Where it’s found: Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act II, Scene I
How it’s used:
FERDINAND: But say that he or we, as neither have,
Received that sum, yet there remains unpaid
A hundred thousand more; in surety of the which,
One part of Aquitaine is bound to us,
Although not valued to the money’s worth.
Where it comes from: There’s no real interesting anecdote about the origins of this phrase, so I’ll just look at where the individual words come from.
Money arrived in English in the late 13th century as an Old French word, moneie, which was borrowed from a Latin word, moneta. Moneta was actually a title of the Roman goddess Juno, in whose temples money was coined. [source]
Worth comes from the other granddaddy of English, Anglo-Saxon. They had a word, weorð, which meant “equal in value to.” It’s (probably) descended from an Indo-European form that is also the root of the word versus. [source]
When he said it: Bentonville, Arkansas, November 6, 2000
What he said:
GOVERNOR GEORGE W. BUSH: They misunderestimated me.
Where it comes from: Misunderestimate filled a lexical cap in the English language, a brilliant move by then-candidate George W. Bush. Obviously such a coinage, made by cobbling together several prefixes and preexisting words, has a complex etymology, so let’s take a look at it.
Mis- as a prefix comes from Old English, with strong roots in the Germanic language family. It actually is related to the word mutable, because its original meaning was “difference.” [source]
Underestimate’s two parts come from two different languages. Under comes from Old English, which spelled the word the same way; it’s Indo-European connections relate it to a lot of words that sound quite different, though. Sanskrit had adhah, Avestan had a prefix of athara-, and even Latin’s infernus comes from the same root. [source]
Estimate comes from Latin, where they had aestimatus. The word’s noun form, aestimare, is the source of the word “esteem.” [source]
See, one neologism coined by George W. Bush that the Angles and Saxons, the Romans, the Zoroastrians, and the people of India played a part of. How cultured!
Where it’s found: Richard II, Act I, Scene I
How it’s used:
KING RICHARD II: Then call them to our presence; face to face,
And frowning brow to brow, ourselves will hear
The accuser and the accused freely speak:
High-stomach’d are they both, and full of ire,
In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.
Where it comes from: Shakespeare did not invent the word accused, but he was the first writer to use it as a noun. And thank God for that, how cumbersome would it be to use “defendant” all the time?
Like a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo in English, accused is based in French and Latin. Old French had a word, acuser, which meant “to accuse” or “to indict.” That came from Latin, accusare, “to call into account.” That is made up of two elements: ad-, which means “without,” and causari, “to give as a cause or motive.” This is related to the root of the English word cause. [source]
Where it’s found: The Comedy of Errors, Act V, Scene I
How it’s used:
ANTIPHOLUS OF EPHESUS: Along with them
They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A dead-looking man: this pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,
And gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as ‘twere, outfacing me
Cries out, I was possess’d.
Where it comes from: Fortune meandered into English from Old French (where the word was spelled the same way), which plucked it from the mouths of the Romans: fortuna was “chance, fate, or good luck,” with its root in the word fors. It’s possible the Latin word has a root in a proto-Indo-European word that meant “to carry.” [source]
Teller in this case means the same as a bank clerk. People in the 15th century understood it to mean “one who keeps accounts.” The word teller is related to the Old English word tellan, which meant “to reckon” or “to account.” Its cousin is the word tale — which is interesting, because most fortune-tellers tell nothing but tales. [source]
Where it’s found: Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene IV
How it’s used:
ARVIRAGUS: It is not likely
That when they hear the Roman horses neigh,
Behold their quarter’d fires, have botht heir eyes
And ears so cloy’d importantly as now,
That they will wast their time upon our note,
To know from whence we are.
Where it comes from: Importantly arrived in Shakespeare’s lexicon thanks to the French: Middle French had the word important, which came from a Latin word, importare. It meant “to bring in.” It should come as no surprise to you that this word is also the root of the word import. [source]
Incidentally, Shakespeare pioneered the usage of import, in the sense of “consequential” or “important,” which is less common to its definition today of goods brought in from a foreign country.
