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Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
This category is for English phrases which were invented by Shakespeare, and older phrases which were notably used in his works. The main article for this category is William Shakespeare . Pages in category "Shakespearean phrases"
Shakespeare added hundreds of new words to the English language, including many commonly used words and colorful expressions that we still use today.
The following is a list of titles of works taken from Shakespearean phrases. This is not the place to list film or television adaptations of Shakespeare's plays; the List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations exists for that purpose.
Adianoeta – a phrase carrying two meanings: an obvious meaning and a second, more subtle and ingenious one (more commonly known as double entendre). Alliteration – the use of a series of two or more words beginning with the same letter. Amphiboly – a sentence that may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous structure.
William Shakespeare's play Hamlet has contributed many phrases to common English, from the famous "To be, or not to be" to a few less known, but still in everyday English. Some also occur elsewhere (e.g. in the Bible) or are proverbial. All quotations are second quarto except as noted:
Isaac Asimov, Guide to Shakespeare. [4] Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret - Hamlet and the Gravediggers. One scholar agrees that the clowning in Shakespeare's plays may have been intended as "an emotional vacation from the more serious business of the main action," in other words, comic relief. [5]
But once Shakespeare's plays became popular in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, they helped contribute to the standardization of the English language, with many Shakespearean words and phrases becoming embedded in the English language, particularly through projects such as Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language which ...