Tag Archives: Word Origin

Common House: A Not-So-Common Phrase

As we all know, Shakespeare was a fantastic wordsmith, utilizing countless puns and inventing new words that we still use today. Because of these feats, when a peculiar word pops up in one of his plays, scholars jump at the chance to figure out what it means. I talked about one such Italian word from Troilus and Cressida last week, and it turns out that seemingly out of place words are a trend in many of Shakespeare’s plays. Continue reading