Every day, many of us English speakers quote William Shakespeare, even if we’ve never read a word of his plays. And we don’t even know we’re doing it. Such is the reach of Shakespeare’s mastery of language that phrases he coined and popularised have, over the centuries since he was writing, been woven into everyday English vocabulary. They range from the obviously poetic to the seemingly banal, but if it wasn’t for Shakespeare, we wouldn’t be using them at all. Here are some of the verbal tics we owe to the Bard.
“Salad days” – Antony and Cleopatra
This is a phrase where the earliest known usage seems to be Shakespeare – and it comes with a handy definition in the text, too. “My salad days, / When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,” says Cleopatra. If only she knew that, years later, her words would form some of the most well-known lyrics of Gold, by Spandau Ballet (“These are my salad days / Slowly being eaten away”). The 1980s owes Shakespeare a great debt, clearly.