Contested Will: What is Shakespeare’s true linguistic legacy?

A new encyclopedia of his language addresses questions of meaning and structure in the playwright’s work. How many words did he coin? Which ones? Take a look.

Orders for beer, courtroom arguments and refugees from France have helped a team of scholars begin to answer questions that have drifted, suspended, around the world for over 400 years: What is Shakespeare’s true linguistic contribution? Which words did he really coin?

(Clockwise from bottom left) King Lear, the Fool, Romeo and Juliet, Lord and Lady Macbeth, Othello and Desdemona, The Three Witches. (Top centre) William Shakespeare (1564-1616). (Photos: Getty Images, Adobe stock, Wikimedia Commons; Photo Imaging: Puneet Kumar)

Jonathan Culpeper, 57, a professor of English language and linguistics at Lancaster University, first began work on what is now an evolving encyclopaedia of Shakespeare’s language, 27 years ago.

He found it rather odd, he says, that a