“Say what you like about Shakespeare, he did enjoy his neologising, coining new words with confidence and consummate skill. He changed nouns to verbs (film, champion), verbs to nouns (dawn, scuffle), verbs to adjectives (hush) and adjectives to nouns (accused). He added prefixes and suffixes (eventful, remorseless) and subtracted parts of words to form new ones (impede from impediment).

He gave new meanings to old words (housekeeper was originally the landlord of a theatre) and compounded existing words to create new ones (birthplace, eyeball, cold-blooded, soft-hearted). In short, he played fast and loose with every convention of language and won hands down.”