Phrases Shakespeare Invented

Shakespeare, in addition to being our foremost playwright and greatest writer (ever checked out the sonnets? (Wo)man!) also spent many of his hours trying to come up with that almost agonizingly appropriate phrase for some of his thoughts. After all, what are words but minds at play?

Here below is a long laundry list of the common phrases Shakespeare is credited with inventing (yes, he invented every phrase he wrote, but these are the ones that have lasted into current slang/prose/language):

• all corners of the world
• All that glitters is not gold
• as ____ as the day is long
• as luck would have it
• band of brothers
• blinking idiot
• budge an inch (or not)
• catch cold
• charmed life
• dead as a doornail
• devil incarnate
• didn't sleep a wink
• eat me out of house and home
• fair play
• fancy free
• flaming youth
• fool's paradise
• forever and a day
• for goodness' sake
• foul play
• give the devil his due
• good riddance
• green-eyed jealousy
• high time
• hoist by your own petard
• household word
• in a pickle
• in stitches
• in the twinkle of an eye
• into thin air
• It's Greek to me
• laughing stock
• love is blind
• make haste
• method to one's madness
• neither here nor there
• no rhyme or reason
• off with his head!
• Oh woe is me
• one fell swoop
• play fast and loose
• primrose path
• rotten to the core
• seen better days
• send one packing
• short shrift
• sink or swim
• Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them
• sorry sight
• sweets to the sweet
• the game is afoot
• the game is up
• the long and short of it
• there's the rub
• tongue tied
• too much of a good thing
• tower of strength
• Tut, tut!
• under the weather
• Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown
• What a piece of work is man
• What is past is prologue
• what the dickens
• wild goose chase
• your own flesh and blood

See also:

• Words Shakespeare Invented
• References To Shakespeare
• The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare