3 ms·

Shakespeare's Vocabulary Considered Unexceptional

9 points by zwischenzug 15y ago

jleyank 15y ago
This kind of analysis should (also?) include checking what words were in common usage prior to the writer vs. what words originated with said writer...
- zwischenzug 15y ago
  I'm not sure how you'd determine that; I guess you'd need a definitive and complete transcription of correctly-dated works. The OED is not a few man-hours work, and even they hesitate to be definitive :)
barrkel 15y ago
There's more power in putting together a handful of common words in a powerful image or metaphor than a particularly apt selection of a single word, for several reasons. Overuse of obscure words will reduce the size of your potential audience; Shakespeare wrote plays that were seen by a broad slice of the population and have humour and puns to match. It wouldn't have made sense for him to dig too far in this direction. Original words, meanwhile, are frequently formed by joining together two other words. Joyce was especially fond of this. A vocabulary wielded almost like a weapon has far more value as a social signifier. Uncommon words are especially potent if they're capable of sending an adversarial interlocutor to the dictionary, because in the heat of the moment your opponent is left with only two choices: concede a point, or look stupid or uneducated asking what you meant. Particularly precise words are also subject to some of the same problems that Orwell enumerates in Politics and the English Language [1]: lazy prefabricated sentence fragments that waffle around the proper thrust of the desired meaning. His essay is a strong affirmation of the value of plain English, suggesting effort be applied to original metaphor, simile and imagery instead. [1] http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
- woodall 15y ago
  Hemingway is another great example of an author who used "simple" language. As a side note, Mark Twain’s “Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling” is a good read/[1] [1] http://christopherwoodall.com/blog/?x=entry:entry101221-022023 http://christopherwoodall.com/blog/?x=entry:entry101221-0220...
- zwischenzug 15y ago
  I believe Shakespeare was considered wordy and difficult by his "broad" audience. But he knew how to hit the crowd's buttons and was considered populist by the literary elite of his day. And the myth of his large vocabulary continues. Looking through the list of unique words used by Joyce, surprisingly few of them looked invented to me.
  - barrkel 15y ago
    Joyce loved making up words by joining them together. It almost seemed like he was making a kind of bid for immortality by throwing as much stuff at the wall and seeing what would stick. It's one of the most obvious characteristics of his writing; that you doubt this makes me wonder if you've read his work. I did a download of Ulysses from Gutenberg, did an egrep -oi '[a-z]+' | sort -fu > u, then aspell dump master > d, then sort -f d d u | uniq -ui; that gives over 7000 seemingly unique words of the of the 29000 used in that book, but many of them are misspellings, transcription errors, proper nouns, Greek references, etc. Here are a small handful selected at random; they are very probably not the best examples, as there are far too many to examine to discern that: crookeding flusterfied holyeyed languideyed unportalling dullbrained darkshawled dedale overarsing heartbalm seacold beardframed doaty birdsnies Many of those 7000+ words that aren't in aspell's dictionary on my machine because they're archaic, legalese, obscure dialect, foreign allusions etc., but you can hardly read a paragraph without some word made up.
    - zwischenzug 15y ago
      Shakespeare's full of mis- and variant spellings too. He's also held up as an example of someone that made up words. My point about Joyce was that, if you want to hold up someone as a writer who has a large vocabulary by the standards that have traditionally been applied (as he has been), then he simply doesn't.
lelele 15y ago
Shakespeare really is the king. His vocabulary was unexceptional, his stories were copied from others and, still, yet his masterpieces are immortal. That teaches us that we don't need either exceptional tools or ideas to succeed.
- zwischenzug 15y ago
  Dr. Faustus ain't too shabby for a young man. I wish Shakespeare had had a go at that story.
daimyoyo 15y ago
The true power of Shakespeare's vocabulary isn't in the variety of the words he used but how he used them. I'd imagine that having a complex rhyming scheme and creating original content in iambic pentameter isn't easy and the fact he pulled it off so eloquently is a testament to his mastery of the English language.

9 points by zwischenzug 15y ago

This kind of analysis should (also?) include checking what words were in common usage prior to the writer vs. what words originated with said writer...

zwischenzug 15y ago
I'm not sure how you'd determine that; I guess you'd need a definitive and complete transcription of correctly-dated works. The OED is not a few man-hours work, and even they hesitate to be definitive :)

barrkel 15y ago

There's more power in putting together a handful of common words in a powerful image or metaphor than a particularly apt selection of a single word, for several reasons. Overuse of obscure words will reduce the size of your potential audience; Shakespeare wrote plays that were seen by a broad slice of the population and have humour and puns to match. It wouldn't have made sense for him to dig too far in this direction. Original words, meanwhile, are frequently formed by joining together two other words. Joyce was especially fond of this. A vocabulary wielded almost like a weapon has far more value as a social signifier. Uncommon words are especially potent if they're capable of sending an adversarial interlocutor to the dictionary, because in the heat of the moment your opponent is left with only two choices: concede a point, or look stupid or uneducated asking what you meant. Particularly precise words are also subject to some of the same problems that Orwell enumerates in Politics and the English Language [1]: lazy prefabricated sentence fragments that waffle around the proper thrust of the desired meaning. His essay is a strong affirmation of the value of plain English, suggesting effort be applied to original metaphor, simile and imagery instead. [1] http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

woodall 15y ago
Hemingway is another great example of an author who used "simple" language. As a side note, Mark Twain’s “Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling” is a good read/[1] [1] http://christopherwoodall.com/blog/?x=entry:entry101221-022023 http://christopherwoodall.com/blog/?x=entry:entry101221-0220...
zwischenzug 15y ago
I believe Shakespeare was considered wordy and difficult by his "broad" audience. But he knew how to hit the crowd's buttons and was considered populist by the literary elite of his day. And the myth of his large vocabulary continues. Looking through the list of unique words used by Joyce, surprisingly few of them looked invented to me.
- barrkel 15y ago
  Joyce loved making up words by joining them together. It almost seemed like he was making a kind of bid for immortality by throwing as much stuff at the wall and seeing what would stick. It's one of the most obvious characteristics of his writing; that you doubt this makes me wonder if you've read his work. I did a download of Ulysses from Gutenberg, did an egrep -oi '[a-z]+' | sort -fu > u, then aspell dump master > d, then sort -f d d u | uniq -ui; that gives over 7000 seemingly unique words of the of the 29000 used in that book, but many of them are misspellings, transcription errors, proper nouns, Greek references, etc. Here are a small handful selected at random; they are very probably not the best examples, as there are far too many to examine to discern that: crookeding flusterfied holyeyed languideyed unportalling dullbrained darkshawled dedale overarsing heartbalm seacold beardframed doaty birdsnies Many of those 7000+ words that aren't in aspell's dictionary on my machine because they're archaic, legalese, obscure dialect, foreign allusions etc., but you can hardly read a paragraph without some word made up.
  - zwischenzug 15y ago
    Shakespeare's full of mis- and variant spellings too. He's also held up as an example of someone that made up words. My point about Joyce was that, if you want to hold up someone as a writer who has a large vocabulary by the standards that have traditionally been applied (as he has been), then he simply doesn't.

lelele 15y ago

Shakespeare really is the king. His vocabulary was unexceptional, his stories were copied from others and, still, yet his masterpieces are immortal. That teaches us that we don't need either exceptional tools or ideas to succeed.

zwischenzug 15y ago
Dr. Faustus ain't too shabby for a young man. I wish Shakespeare had had a go at that story.

daimyoyo 15y ago

The true power of Shakespeare's vocabulary isn't in the variety of the words he used but how he used them. I'd imagine that having a complex rhyming scheme and creating original content in iambic pentameter isn't easy and the fact he pulled it off so eloquently is a testament to his mastery of the English language.