Shakespeare is Shakespeare is Shakespeare

On the last day of its run this summer, I saw Othello at Shakespeare on the Common. The characters wore 1940s garb for no apparent reason, the backdrop was a metallic slab reminiscent of the Aggro Crag, and I'm pretty sure an understudy was on Iago duty, which is a shame since Iago is pretty much the only reason to like Othello. Instead of the devious, evil, unrepentant villain I love, the actor came off as, well, what he was: a nervous guy who didn't quite remember all his lines and had to keep reminding himself to speak loud enough to be heard across the Common. Still, Shakespeare is Shakespeare and free is free. 

For my own amusement, I made a list of the words that made me go "pffft, you made that up" (until shortly after intermission when I decided I'd need a more attentive ear and a lot more paper if I really wanted to keep up):

englut                                                    

slubber

satiety                                                     

disrelish

displant                                                   

quillet

engraft                                                    

mazard

infortune                                                 

insufflate

unswear                                                 

beshrew

direful                                                    

continuate

Despite my conviction at the time that Shakespeare just threw a prefix or suffix on a word whenever he needed another syllable for his iambic pentameter, turns out most of these actually are or were real words.


I also made a list of my rediscovered favorite Othello quotations:

"I am not what I am." (I.i)
Because that's so Iago.

"Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs." (I.i)
Because, oh, that's where that saying comes from.

"Men should be what they seem; / Or those that be not, would they might seem none!" (III.iii)
What can I say? I'm a seeming-versus-reality fan.

"O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on." (III.iii)
Again, etymology.

"Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore, / Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof; / Or, by the worth of mine eternal soul, / Thou hadst been better have been born a dog / Than answer my wak'd wrath." (III.iii)
Because angry Othello is not a man to be trifled with.

"Unkindness may do much, / And his unkindness may defeat my life / But never taint my love." (IV.ii)
Because that's so Desdemona.

"Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: / From this time forth I never will speak word." (V.ii)
Because "What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask." (Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays)

"I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this, / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss." (V.ii)
Because everyone loves a little morbid romance. Right?

Irony

You might think an institution of learning is one of the most likely places for the word "school" to be spelled correctly. But, you'd be wrong.

Jabberwocky

I recently discovered Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary. Anyone can submit to and view words that have been submitted to the Open Dictionary. The service is to catalog words that have not yet appeared in dictionaries, either because they have only recently come into existence or because they are forehead slap-inducing stupid (do not fret; I shall, of course, elaborate).

In the spirit of democracy, I'm all for an open dictionary. You may or may not be aware, but putting together a dictionary is a political affair. There are liberal and conservative dictionaries. There are dictionaries that take pleasure in finding the cleverest, quirkiest, idiosyncrasies of living language. And there are dictionaries that obsessively seek to protect The King's English from those mean, nasty jerks: addition, permutation, evolution. For further information on this point, please see "Authority and American Usage," also know as "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage" by David Foster Wallace, which is one of the most interesting pieces of non-fiction writing I have read in my life. "Did you know that probing the seamy underbelly of U.S. lexicography reveals ideological strife and controversy and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a nearly hanging-chad scale? [...] Did you know that U.S. lexicography even had a seamy underbelly?" No? Then go read the essay. Seriously. Even if that sort of thing doesn't appeal to you, David Foster Wallace was one smart, funny, entertaining man. He'll make it worth your while.

Point is, I think an open dictionary is all to the good. In theory. For instance, these words

—

isogram (noun) : a word or phrase in which no letter is repeated; minorly (adjective) : in a minor way; shapewear (noun) : underwear that is made with elastic nylon so that the wearer has a slimmer appearance; and smartphone (noun) : a phone (especially a mobile phone) that provides additional capabilities including Internet access and which has an operating system comparable to a desktop computer operating system—are all useful, logical additions to the language. However, these words—sturdability (noun) : sturdiness; globalistic (adjective) : concerning or encouraging globalism; and elaboratize (verb) : to make elaborate or complex—make me want to slap someone in the mouth. People, if you need to define a word by using a different form of the same word, there's already a word for the thing you are attempting to invent. Duh! In these cases, they are: sturdiness, global, and complicate. Id est, refudiate is not the coining of a new word, it is the garbling of two already-existing, perfectly serviceable ones. Also known as portmanteau. But hey. Why not just call it the Palin-Upchuck Phenomenon?