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Word of the Day: Brimstone

Given that it’s been a while since I last wrote about Shakespeare and fire, I decided to return to the topic with this thrice-occurring word. Although we now talk about the ‘brim’ or edge of an object,...

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Word of the Day: Pawn

Everyone knows that this word refers to the most insignificant piece on the chessboard, and from this, it is tempting to understand Kent’s use of the word in his pledge of loyalty to an irate King Lear...

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Word of the Day: Haggard

Although it’s not very polite, one can still say nowadays that someone is looking a bit ‘haggard’. Unfortunately, what we use the word to mean – “Wild-looking, applied […] to the injurious effect upon...

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Word of the Day: Varlet

“A good varlet, a good varlet, a very good varlet”, says Shallow of his servant, after having drunk a few too many glasses of “sack” (wine). The question is, though, is the inebriated rustic being...

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Word of the Day: Canker

Canker comes to us from the classical Latin ‘cancer’, meaning the sign of the zodiac, an actual crab, and anything from a whole range of tumours, abscesses, sores and even worms. According to Paulus...

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Word of the Day: Ragamuffin

We are near the end of Henry IV part I, on the battlefield not far from Shrewsbury. King Henry’s army is locked in bloody combat with the rebel forces, led by Douglas and Hotspur. Completely out of...

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Word of the Day: Kibes

The source of this word is – most likely – Welsh, where cibi or cibwst means exactly the same thing as Shakespeare’s four “kibes”. That meaning evidently has something to do with feet, as the Fool...

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Word of the Day: Flesh

O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! says Hamlet in soliloquy at I.ii, unknowingly anticipating the sight of his dead, and now ghostly, father. As the...

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Word of the Day: Sword

Henry V, Act II, Scene 1:   NYM You’ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting? PISTOL Base is the slave that pays. NYM That now I will have: that’s the humour of it. PISTOL As manhood shall...

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Word of the Day: Machiavel

There are, according to various counts, approximately four hundred references to Niccolò Machiavelli in Elizabethan literature. Three of them are in plays of Shakespeare; what is interesting is that...

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