Here’s something to cheer us up on a Monday which also happens to be Talk Like Shakespeare Day.
Even Shakespeare had some stinkers.
Shakespeare introduced about 1,000 new words to the English language.
Here are some that didn’t catch on:
boggler (someone who hesitates)
carlot (peasant)
cockled (living in a shell)
foxship (address to a cunning person, i.e. your foxship)
kickie-wickie (affectionate term for a wife)
near-legged (knock-kneed)
swoltery (hot and sticky)
quatch (plump)
wappened (corrupt)
Other also-rans include bubukles, congreeing, conspectuities, dispunge, enactures, fracted, to friend, germins, incarnadine, intrenchant, irregulous, mirable, oppugnancy, palmy, plantage, primy, propugnation, relume, reprobance, rigol, rooky, roted, rubious, smilets, unsisting and virgined.
‘Virgined’ means ‘held securely’, incidentally.
How is bubukles not still with us? It sounds exactly like what it is – a large red blemish or pimple.
It seems even Shakespeare found it hard to follow the advice:
“kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.”
Maybe today, we can use some of the less-than-perfect-but-also-pretty-great words.
Go on, don’t be a boggler.
Perhaps avoid virgined, though.
