The Time-Traveling Power of One Extraordinary Mind

Find: 1. Four book or movie titles 2. A pair of direct opposites 3. A Joni Mitchell lyric 4. A Neil Young song title

William Shakespeare coined these 300 words and phrases over 400 years ago. How often do we still use them? Estimated number of times these words would appear in 10,000 books published today

Green: from the comedies

operate 12,177 manager 9,317 employer 5,448 exposure 4,772 educate 2,424 negotiate 2,399 informal 2,229 accessible 1,489 reinforcement 1,454 invitation 1,398 generous 1,304

100 to 999

20 to 100

lovers 2,480

denote 2,303

restoration 1,684 vulnerable 1,534

excitement 1,518 comply 1,371

reliance 1,299

accommodation 1,226 engagement 1,214

Purple: from the histories investments

11,586 traditional 10,563 useful 9,301 retirement 2,202 hostile 1,600 contemplate 1,236

Grey: from the poems counterpart 1,712

1,258

86 full circle 82

54 39 inauspicious 39 unimproved 36 airless 32 pendulous 28 unpolluted 25 reword 24

in my heart of hearts 22

foul play

perusal

971 priceless 124

88 52

fount

51

35 predecease 28

heart's content

20

for goodness' sake

18 18 invulnerable 61 breathed his last 15 valueless 47 persistency 13 dishearten 47 obduracy 12 enfranchisement 45 heart of gold 9 expiate 35 tower of strength 8 remorseless 31 play fast and loose 7 short shrift 29 deracinate 7 turn the tide 25 fight fire with fire 6 misquote 25 drollery 6

disgraceful

featureless

supplicant

21

spectatorship 21

685 prophetic 545 faint-hearted 516 luggage 316 amazement 308 motionless 281 inducement 249 misplaced 194 divest 163 consign 162 savagery 110

useless



foregone conclusion

93

expedience

household words

discretion

23

is the better

part of valor night owl 6

5 knit brow 2.0

0.81 0.76 0.66 0.65 0.32 0.32 0.32 0.09 0.03 0.02 0.02 0.02

the beast with two backs 0.97 all our yesterdays 0.96

hoist with his own petard 0.83 compunctious 0.75 superflux 0.75

her infinite variety 0.72

that way madness lies 0.70 parting is such

sweet sorrow 0.68

trippingly on the tongue 0.66

beggar all description 0.56 4.9 smells to heaven 0.54 there’s the rub 4.6 itching palm 0.52 milk of human kindness 4.4 towering passion 0.49 wear my heart upon my sleeve 4.1 infirm of purpose 0.44 salad days 4.0 screw your courage the primrose path 3.6 to the sticking place 0.37 sorry sight 3.5 something wicked more sinned against than sinning 3.1 this way comes 0.29 slings and arrows of outrageous fortune 2.7 dish fit for the gods 0.26 the live-long day 2.4 what a piece of work is man 0.25 more in sorrow than in anger 2.5 constant as the northern star 0.22 method in my madness 2.2 overcredulous 0.21 crack of doom 2.0 compulsatory 0.19 clothes make the man 1.9 conscience makes it was Greek to me 1.9 cowards of us all 0.16 let slip the dogs of war 1.8 bemonster 0.12 the green-eyed monster 1.8 apoplexed 0.10 a rose by any other name 1.7 disquantity 0.09 a plague on both your houses 1.6 fishify 0.09 the time is out of joint 1.6 varletry 0.07 as pure as the driven snow 1.5 malefaction 1.4 cruel to be kind 1.2 send him uneasy lies the head that wears a crown 0.85 lend me your ears 1.2 my kingdom for a horse 0.76 packing 3.6 brevity is the soul of wit 1.0 irreconciled 0.25 devil incarnate 3.2 exhibiter 0.20 murder most foul 1.1 off with his head 2.9 as merry as the day is long 0.10 neither a borrower nor a lender be 1.1 give the devil his due 1.7

11 seen better days 10 pomp and circumstance 10 the be-all and end-all 9 unsex 9 the lady doth protest too much 9 reverb 8 wild goose chase 7 what's in a name? 7 what's done is done 7 a ministering angel 6 a charmed life 6 duellist 5

unnerved 55

kill with kindness what fools these mortals be as good luck would have it extravagancy out of the jaws of death laid on with a trowel the short and the long of it allayment anthropophaginian subduement superdainty under-honest

stand on ceremony

nervy

in my mind's eye 64

sate

Less than once

(would appear once in more than 10,000 books)

sick at heart 12

ensconced 60

addiction

6. To be or not to be? What’s in a name?

impair

dislocate

4. Heart of Gold 5. Officer Shrift, who is very, very short

star-crossed

941 countless 663 aerial 594 assassination 582 impede 569 pious 494 discontent 449 compulsive 366 unreal 271 majestic 234 immediacy 225 submerge 198 tranquil 186 operant 186 epileptic 169 distasteful 127 unsolicited 116 unrelenting 106 castigate 104 enmesh 101

1 to 9

triplex 20 all’s well that ends well 4.5 rancorous 17 dash to pieces 4.2 sportive 16 all corners of the world 4.0 hob nob 15 in stitches 4.0 consanguineous 14 fancy-free 3.7 good riddance 14 much ado about nothing 3.7 abstemious 12 love is blind 3.3 too much of a good thing 11 such stuff as pound of flesh 11 dreams are made of 2.5 laughing stock 10 conflux 2.2 bated breath 9 plain as a nose strange bedfellows 9 on a man’s face 2.2 dexterously 8 bifold 2.1 naked truth 7 in a pickle 2.1 the game is up 7 for ever and a day 2.0 all the world's a stage 5 quillet 2.0 budge an inch 5 all that glisters is not gold 1.9 commixture 1.8 one fell swoop 16 like the dickens 1.7 to be or not to be? 15 the past is prologue 1.7 own flesh and blood 14 the truth will out 1.7 neither here nor there 14 thereby hangs a tale 1.4 make your hair stand on end 13 the world is your oyster 1.3 sound and fury 12 the quality of mercy is not strained 1.1

rumination 60 mountaineer 89 inaudible 57 Cretan 82 academe 54 domineering 79 laughable 53 gallantry 75 unmitigated 51 frugal 72 pageantry 50 arbitrate 69 quarrelsome 47 enthroned 69 brave new world 44 lustrous 66 ingenuous 43 eventful 63 imminence 43 high time 60 mutineer 42 baseless 38 mimic 37 reclusive 31 pitched battle 30 lie low 30 undervalued)30 pedant 28 break the ice 24 unrivaled 24 sanctimonious 24 a sea change 24 remorseful 21

fashionable 583 fixture 525 admirable 407 malignancy 383 transcendence 352 indistinguishable 327 courtship 319 refractory 313 adjunct 281 obscene 281 sympathize 280 all of a sudden 250 cater to 214 exhale 193 radiance 191 uneducated 150 posture

Blue: from the tragedies

10 to 19

set your teeth on edge

4.7 4.5 eaten me out of house and home 4.0 clangor

once more unto the breach

farewell to all my greatness 0.08 fustilarian 0.03

1.3

allegiant

1.2

spotless reputation

1.0

the game is afoot

1.0

Answers: 1. Brave New World, Murder Most Foul, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Allegiant 2. Useful, useless 3. Constant as the northern star, “A Case of You”

1,000 +

5. A character from The Phantom Tollbooth 6. Two questions 7. A euphemism for sex

7. The beast with two backs

Words and phrases by source play or poem

Methodology Selecting the words and phrases

Single words and their source plays were drawn from: Shakespeare’s Latinate Neologisms, Garner, Bryan A., Shakespeare Studies, 1982; 15: 149 Phrases and their source plays were drawn from a variety of sources.

Each was confirmed by at least one scholarly source that Shakespeare’s use was likely first. (OED first citation not necessarily proof.) Words and phrases with the smallest frequencies in the data were dropped to form a round list of 300.

Gathering and preparing the data

The Google NGram Viewer (books. google.com) allows users to search their corpus of millions of digitized books spanning from the 17th century to today. An n-gram is a phrase of length n words. For any searched phrase up to five words, the NGram Viewer gives this percentage: Number of n-grams that match the searched term All n-grams in all searched books

The raw percentages out of the NGram Viewer ranged in magnitude from 10-2 to 10-9. To make these numbers more interpretable, they were switched to counts of n-gram occurrences in 10,000 books, assuming 10,000 words per book (multiplied by 108). The number of n-grams in a book is roughly equal to the number of words, because each word starts a new n-gram.

Searches were performed on books published between 1750 and 2000, with 20-year moving averages. Searches included plurals, capitalizations, inflections and all verb tenses. Data were collected directly from the source code of the resulting NGram Viewer graphs. The data from 2000 are presented here; the pre-2000 data will be used in the next visualization. Making the visualization

Created in Adobe InDesign CC, Release 2015.0. This font is from the First Folio, 1623.

Drawing is based on the Chandros portrait (National Portrait Gallery, London), believed to be of Shakespeare. With apologies to my Oxfordian friends.

Key to source names Code 1h4 1h6 2h4 2h6 3h6 ado ant aww ayl cor cym err h5 h8 ham jc jn lc lll lr luc mac mm mnd mv oth per r2 r3 rj shr son tgv tim tit tmp tn tro wiv

Title Henry IV Pt 1 Henry VI Pt 1 Henry IV Pt 2 Henry VI Pt 2 Henry VI Pt 3 Much Ado Antony & Cleopatra All’s Well As You Like It Coriolanus Cymbeline Comedy of Errors Henry V Henry VIII Hamlet Julius Caesar King John Lover’s Compaint Love’s Labors Lost King Lear Rape of Lucrece Macbeth Measure for Measure Midsummer Night’s Merchant of Venice Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo & Juliet Taming of the Shrew Sonnets Two Gentlemen Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Tempest Twelfth Night Troilus & Cressida Merry Wives

Type History History History History History Comedy Tragedy Comedy Comedy Tragedy Comedy Comedy History History Tragedy Tragedy History Poem Comedy Tragedy Poem Tragedy Comedy Comedy Comedy Tragedy Comedy History History Tragedy Comedy Poem Comedy Tragedy Tragedy Comedy Comedy Comedy Comedy

a charmed life a ministering angel a plague on both your houses a rose by any other name a sea change abstemious academe accessible accommodation addiction adjunct admirable aerial airless all corners of the world all of a sudden all our yesterdays all that glisters is not gold all the world’s a stage all’s well that ends well allayment allegiant amazement anthropophaginian apoplexed arbitrate as good luck would have it as merry as the day is long as pure as the driven snow assassination baseless bated breath beggar all description bemonster bifold brave new world break the ice breathed his last brevity is the soul of wit budge an inch castigate cater to clangor clothes make the man commixture comply compulsatory compulsive compunctious conflux consanguineous conscience makes cowards of us all consign constant as the northern star contemplate counterpart countless courtship crack of doom Cretan cruel to be kind dash to pieces denote deracinate devil incarnate dexterously discontent discretion is the better part of valor disgraceful dish fit for the gods dishearten dislocate disquantity distasteful divest domineering drollery

mac ham rj rj tmp tmp lll cym oth h5 lll mnd oth jc cym shr mac mv ayl aww tro h8 jn wiv ham lll wiv jn mac mac tmp mv ant lr tro tmp shr 3h6 ham shr tim ayl 3h6 ham lll ham ham ham mac tro tn ham h5 jc 3h6 son tit lll mac shr ham tmp rj h5 h5 tn tit 1h4 1h6 jc h5 lr lr tim h5 lll 2h4

duellist eaten me out of house and home educate employer enfranchisement engagement enmesh ensconced enthroned epileptic eventful excitement exhale exhibiter expedience expiate exposure extravagancy faint-hearted fancy-free farewell to all my greatness fashionable featureless fight fire with fire fishify fixture for ever and a day for goodness’ sake foregone conclusion foul play fount frugal full circle fustilarian gallantry generous give the devil his due good riddance heart of gold heart’s content her infinite variety high time hob nob hoist with his own petard hostile household words immediacy imminence impair impede in a pickle in my heart of hearts in my mind’s eye in stitches inaudible inauspicious indistinguishable inducement infirm of purpose informal ingenuous investments invitation invulnerable irreconciled it was Greek to me itching palm kill with kindness knit brow laid on with a trowel laughable laughing stock lend me your ears let slip the dogs of war lie low like the dickens love is blind luggage lustrous

rj 2h4 lll ado jn jc oth jc tro lr ayl ham lll h5 r2 r3 tro tn 1h6 mnd h8 tro son jn rj wiv shr h8 oth ham lc ado lr 2h4 tro lll 1h4 tro h5 2h6 ant err tn ham r3 h5 lr tro son mac tmp ham ham tn aww rj tro r3 mac mm lll 2h4 wiv jn h5 jc jc shr luc ayl mv wiv jc jc ado wiv mv 1h4 aww

majestic make your hair stand on end malefaction malignancy manager method in my madness milk of human kindness mimic misplaced misquote more in sorrow than in anger more sinned against than sinning motionless mountaineer much ado about nothing murder most foul mutineer my kingdom for a horse naked truth negotiate neither a borrower nor a lender be neither here nor there nervy night owl obduracy obscene off with his head once more unto the breach one fell swoop operant operate out of the jaws of death overcredulous own flesh and blood pageantry parting is such sweet sorrow pedant pendulous persistency perusal pious pitched battle plain as a nose on a man’s face play fast and loose pomp and circumstance posture pound of flesh predecease priceless prophetic quarrelsome quillet radiance rancorous reclusive refractory reinforcement reliance remorseful remorseless restoration retirement reverb reword rumination salad days sanctimonious sate savagery screw your courage to the sticking place seen better days send him packing set your teeth on edge short shrift sick at heart

jc ham ham tn lll ham mac mnd r3 1h4 ham lr h5 tmp ado ham tmp r3 lll ado ham oth cor luc 2h4 lll 3h6 h5 mac ham tro tn mac ham per rj lll lr 2h4 son ham shr tgv jn oth jc mv luc luc jn shr lll aww err ado tro tro tim tgv 2h6 lr 1h4 lr ham ayl ant mm ham jn mac tim 1h4 1h4 r3 ham

slings and arrows of outrageous fortune smells to heaven something wicked this way comes sorry sight sound and fury spectatorship sportive spotless reputation stand on ceremony star-crossed lovers strange bedfellows subduement submerge such stuff as dreams are made of superdainty superflux supplicant sympathize that way madness lies the be-all and end-all the beast with two backs the game is afoot the game is up the green-eyed monster the lady doth protest too much the live-long day the past is prologue the primrose path the quality of mercy is not strained the short and the long of it the time is out of joint the truth will out the world is your oyster there’s the rub thereby hangs a tale to be or not to be too much of a good thing tower of strength towering passion traditional tranquil transcendence triplex trippingly on the tongue turn the tide under-honest undervalue uneasy lies the head that wears a crown uneducated unimproved unmitigated unnerved unpolluted unreal unrelenting unrivaled unsex unsolicited useful useless valueless varletry vulnerable wear my heart upon my sleeve what a piece of work is man what fools these mortals be what’s done is done what’s in a name wild goose chase

By Kate Miller ©2015 [email protected]

ham ham mac mac mac cor err r3 jc rj tmp tro ant tmp shr lr lc lll lr mac oth 1h4 cym oth ham jc tmp ham mv wiv ham mv wiv ham ayl ham ayl r3 ham r3 oth aww tn ham h5 tro mv 2h4 lll ham ado ham ham mac tit tgv mac tit jn luc jn ant mac oth ham mnd mac rj rj