The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way

By Bill Bryson

Many words are made up by writers. According to apparently careful calculations, Shakespeare used 17,677 words in his writings, of which at least one tenth had never been used before. Imagine if every tenth word you wrote were original. It is a staggering display of ingenuity. But then Shakespeare lived in an age when words and ideas burst upon the world as never before or since. For a century and a half, from 1500 to 1650, English flowed with new words. Between 10,000 and 12,000 words were coined, of which about half still exist. Not until modern times would this number be exceeded, but even then there is no comparison. The new words of today represent the explosion of technology --- words like lunar module and myocardial infarction --- rather than of poetry and feeling. Consider the words that Shakespeare alone gave us, barefaced, critical, leapfrog, monumental, castigate, majestic, obscene, frugal, radiance, dwindle, countless, submerged, excellent, fretful, gust, hint, hurry, lonely, summit, pedant, obscene, and some 1,685 others. (p. 76)

It seems that the greatest genius always occurs at the beginning of a civilization, when the structure of a society is most fluid. It is the case for Shakespeare. It is also true for Kepler and Newton. By the way, I believe most of words Shakespeare created actually already existed at that time but were not incorporated in writings because they were used by the common and not the elite. So genius are the people who are willing to listen to the voice of the bottom of the society instead of the top of the society.