Illustration © notkoo/Shutterstock
Editor's Note:
David Peterson received his MA in Linguistics from the University of California, San Diego, in 2005, and cofounded the Language Creation Society in 2007. He has created languages for HBO’s Game of Thrones, among others. He is also the author of Living Language Dothraki and The Art of Language Invention. For Signature, David revels in a few Shakespearean words that showcase the creativity of his wordplay, from “relume” to “massy.”
When I think about reading Shakespeare — or, better,
seeing his work performed live — my most cherished bits are those in
which Shakespeare makes up a word all his own simply to fit the meter,
or as a way of calling to mind some specific shade of meaning often
glossed over when a synonymous yet more common term is used.
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The Art of Language Invention
OTHELLO
…but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume.
What a gorgeous word for “reilluminate”: a disyllabic iamb forged from a Latinate root and the prefix re- specifically to get the meter right. Perhaps the whole thing could have been reworked to allow for “reilluminate,” but why bother when this coinage does the trick?
BENEDICK
Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of
the brain awe a man from the career of his humour?
No, the world must be peopled.
Is “people” a noun? Sure. But why can’t it be more? Why can it not verb?
ARIEL
the elements,
Of whom your swords are temper’d, may as well
Wound the loud winds, or with bemock’d-at stabs
Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
One dowle that’s in my plume: my fellow-ministers
Are like invulnerable. If you could hurt,
Your swords are now too massy for your strengths
And will not be uplifted.
“Massy” is a word one wouldn’t use everyday for “heavy,” and while we know “uplifted” as an adjective, it’s rare to see it as a verb. And “bemock’d-at”? What a treasure!
These types of word-formation strategies are precisely what we see today in words like comentate, conversate, hate-watch, or ship. (Alas! I knew as slow their tea they sipp’d / That such a pair as this must sure be shipp’d!) It’s the type of wordplay that Shakespeare reveled in that we now decry. And to what end? There’s a word for a language that doesn’t change: Dead."There's a word for a language that doesn't change: Dead."TWEET THIS QUOTE
We should encourage English users both young and old and from every walk of life to engage in word formation as Shakespeare did — to try things out and enverbulate their language. As users we all get a vote as to what we like and what we don’t (and, indeed, even though I just used it, I’m not sold on “enverbulate”), but there’s no harm in making new proposals, be they short and sweet like bae, or long and convoluted like meme-ification.
If Shakespeare were alive today, he wouldn’t be deterred by the little red underline that tags misspellings — in fact, he’d probably turn it off. And who knows? The next Shakespeare may actually be alive today, and I guarantee you they’re not paying any attention to those who tell them what they can and cannot say.
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