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Baron Greenback, insults are not permitted in General Questions. Don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
No, it’s:
Which I found rather fitting, as soon as first I heard it.
divers /'daiv3rz/ adjective archaic or literary more than one; various, several. [Old French from Latin diversus DIVERSE (as DI-[sup]2[/sup], versus past participle of vertere turn)]
- Canadian Oxford Dictionary
OK, now I see your sig. I hadn’t realized that this MB had an option to supress their display.
As far as the OP is concerned, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Shakespeare actually had not coined any words at all. The fact that Shakespeare (or anyone else) is the earliest known cite for a word does not make them the coiner of that word.
There’s actually relatively few words where the coiner is known beyond any doubt. And it’s even rarer for someone to coin more than one and when they do it’s just a small handful. (Lewis Carroll is the only multiple word-coiner that comes immediately to mind, and while he coined a bunch, only 3 are listed in dictionaries.) I have strong doubts about Shakespeare being so exceptional as to have coined 2000 or so words.
My friends and I had always assumed that he coined the words because there wasn’t another one at the time that would fit into iambic pentameter. But most of those words don’t fit that idea at all. Quite a few seem to be completely obvious coinages, similar to those that happen today.
Asimov is credited with “robotics”, “positronic”, and “psychohistory”, though only the first ever sees usage outside of science fiction.
“pyschohistory” does have a use outside of science fiction - just not the meaning that the Good Doctor gave it.
And I could probably find a handful of scientific papers using “positronic”, too (though they wouldn’t be in reference to robot brains). I probably should have said that only “robotics” sees mainstream use.
BTW, what are the three dictionary words Carroll coined? There’s plenty in “Jabberwocky”, of course, but I’m not sure any of them are mainstream enough for dictionaries.
The standard online suggestions for Carroll’s coinages going mainstream seem to be “chortle”, “galumph” and (less commonly) “burble”.
M-W says that burble dates from the 14th century. The 3 I had in mind were chortle, galumph and jabberwocky, which are all in M-W’s Collegiate. The Third Unabridged has at least one more (bandersnatch), but I haven’t checked it for all his other coinages. Also, the word boojum is in the dictionary as a type of tree. At best he gets half credit for that one.
I thought of another person who gets credit for more than one word: Jonathan Swift.
My Concise OED has chortle, galumph and jabberwocky, and also snark, all attributed to Carroll, so that makes four at least in the OED. Doesn’t have either bandersnatch or boojum.