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- You have made fair hands,
- You and your crafts! you have crafted fair! -- Coriolanus, iv. 6.
A noun thus fashioned into a verb is not only a characteristic of Menenius -- who is famous for his jocose fabrication of words -- but is a colloquial usage in the English language.
This place is too cold for hell. I'll devil-porter it no farther. -- Macbeth, ii. 3.
He has as many friends as enemies; which friends, sir, as it were, durst not, look you, sir, show themselves, as we term it, his friends whilst he's in directitude. -- Directitude! What's that? -- Coriolanus, iv. 5.
The Third Servant, wishing to use a fine long word, and intending to coin some such term as 'discreditude' or 'dejectitude,' blunders out his grandiloquent "directitude"; which the First Servant, not comprehending, repeats amazedly and asks the meaning of; but the Third Servant, being at a loss to explain, avoids the inquiry by running on with his harangue.
Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence. -- Measure for Measure, iii. 2.
The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic, and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. -- Coriolanus, ii. 1.
Menenius uses "empiricutic" as a droll form of 'empirical.'
He says his name is Master Fer. -- Master Fer! I'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him. -- Henry V, iv. 4.
They fought together, but Aufidius got off. -- And 'twas time for him too, I'll warrant him that: an he had stayed by him, I would not have been so fidiused for all the chests in Corioli. -- Coriolanus, ii. 1.
- Loved me above the measure of a father;
- Nay, godded me, indeed. -- Coriolanus, v. 3.
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- Oh, base Gongarian wight! -- Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 3.
Ancient Pistol's sounding substitution for 'Hungarian'; which was a term of reproach, as the gypsies came from Hungary and Bohemia, and thus it was synonymous with 'vagabond' as well as (punningly) with a hungry, beggarly fellow.
Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? -- Love's Labor's Lost, v. 2.
Don Armado, magniloquently frames the word "infamonize" to express 'defame,' 'render me infamous,'
- You are grand-jurors, are ye? We'll jure ye, i' fath. -- Henry IV, Part I, ii. 2.
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- He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,
- And I (God bless the mark!) his Moorship's ancient. -- Othello, i. 1.
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- It out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it. -- Hamlet, iii. 2.
Then is there here one Master Caper, at the suit of Master Three-pile, the mercer, for some four suits of peach-coloured satin, which now peaches him a beggar. -- Measure for Measure, iv. 3.
The Clown employs the verb "peaches" as a quibble on the "peach-coloured satin" and as a familiar form of 'impeaches.'
- How fiery and forward our pedant is!
- Now, for my life, the knave doth court my love.
- Pedascule, I'll watch you better yet. -- Taming of the Shrew, iii. 1.
Hortensio fabricates "pedascule" as a scoffing repetition of "pedant," implying (in Latinised form) that he mentally foots or kicks him with utmost ignominy.
- Yet heard too much of Phebe's cruelty.--
- She Phebes me: mark how the tyrant writes. -- As You Like It, iv. 3.
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- Thou 'rt an emperor, Caesar, Keisar, and Pheezar. -- Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 3.
The Host jocularly invents the term "Pheezar" from the verb 'pheeze' (to vex, worry, or harry), in order to denote Falstaff's vexed state of mind and to make a jingle with "Caesar" and "Keisar."
Come, Mother Prat; come, give me your hand. -- I'll prat her. Out of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you polecat, you ronyon! Out, out! I'll conjure you, I'll fortune-tell you. -- Merry Wives of Windsor, iv. 2.
I' faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in an excellent good temperality: your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as heart would desire. -- Henry IV, Part II, ii. 4.
Hostess Quickly's word "temperality" gives the effect of a combined or optional meaning of 'temperament' and 'temperature'; while her word 'pulsidge' for 'pulse' aids to convey an impression of fulness that is extremely apt.
- How now, how no, chop-logic! What is this?
- Proud -- and I thank you -- and, I thank you not;
- And yet not proud: mistress, minion, you,
- Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds. -- Romeo and Juliet, iii. 5.
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- Take your vizaments in that. -- Merry Wives of Windsor, i. 1.
Sir Hugh Evan's Welsh says, "vizaments," intending to fashion the word 'advisements,' as a term expressive of consideration, circumspection.
There are some words, coined from their expressive sound, which Shakespeare's excellent taste and judgment caused him to adopt in passages where they give spirited effect:
- For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite
- The man that mocks at it, and sets it light. -- Richard II, i. 3.
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- Thus is the shepherd beaten from thy side,
- And wolves are gnarling who shall gnaw thee first. -- Henry VI, Part II, iii. 1.
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- If I go to him, with my armed fist
- I'll pash him o'er the face. -- Troilus and Cressida, ii. 3.
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- And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,
- Upon the pashed corses of the kings. -- Troilus and Cressida, v. 5.
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- I'll potch at him some way. -- Coriolanus, i. 10.
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- He'll go, he says, and sowle the porter of Rome gates by the ears. -- Coriolanus, iv. 5.
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- As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. -- Henry V, iii. 2.
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- We'll have a swashing and a martial outside. -- As You Like It, i. 3.
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- Gregory, remember thy swashing blow. -- Romeo and Juliet, i. 1.
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- For she had a tongue with a tang,
- Would cry to a sailor, "Go hang!" -- Tempest, ii. 2.
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- Let thy tongue tang arguments of state. -- Twelfth Night, ii. 5.
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- And like a dog that is compelled to fight,
- Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on. -- King John, iv. 1.
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- Two currs shall tame each other: pride alone
- Must tarre the mastiffs on, as 'twere their bone. -- Troilus and Cressida, i. 3.
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- The nation holds it no sin to tarre them to controversy. -- Hamlet, ii. 2.
It comes to pass oft, that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. -- Twelfth Night, iii. 4.
- Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
- Will hum about mine ears. -- Tempest, iii. 2.
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- While she did call me rascal fiddler
- and twangling Jack. -- Taming of the Shrew, ii. 1.
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- The exhalations whizzing in the air. -- Julius Caesar, ii. 1.
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- To have a thousand with red burning spits
- Come whizzing in upon them. -- King Lear, iii. 6.
There are w few peculiar words retained in most editions of Shakespeare, because they are words printed in the first folio edition, and because they may possibly be the author's original expressions, coined by himself:
- And soberly did mount an arm-gaunt steed. -- Antony and Cleopatra, i. 5.
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- Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
- With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
- And in the porches of mine ears did pour
- The leperous distilment. -- Hamlet, i. 5.
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- You are abus'd, and by some putter-on,
- That will be damn'd for't; would I knew the villain,
- I would land-damn him. -- Winter's Tale, ii. 1.
If these three words be indeed Shakespeare's coinage, they may have been meant by him to signify thus: "Arm-gaunt" may be taken to convey the idea of 'gaunt from long being clad in armed caparisons, and from long bearing an armed rider'; "hebenon" may be accepted as a form of henbane (the oil of which, according to Pliny, disturbs the brain), or of 'ebony' (which was believed to possess soporific and poisonous qualities); and "land-damn" has been supposed to be a mode of succinctly expressing, either 'condemn to quit the land,' or 'doom to the torture of being banked up on earth and left to die.'
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