You might be surprised to learn just how many words invented by Shakespeare (or, to be more precise, words whose earliest known source is Shakespeare) crop up in your own conversations—from advertising to eyeball.
Though the Bard may be the most prolific term-coiner in literary history, he’s far from the only one. Thanks to John Milton, we have the perfect word to describe Black Friday shopping andTimes Square on New Year’s Eve: pandemonium. And Norman Mailer gave us factoid, which, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t mean “small fact.”
Pandemonium, factoid, and 10 other author-invented terms are featured in Mental Floss’s new book, The Curious Compendium of Wonderful Words: A Miscellany of Obscure Terms, Bizarre Phrases, & Surprising Etymologies, out now. To celebrate its release, we’ve hidden all the terms in the word search above (and you can see it larger here). How fast can you spot them?
You can learn more about the origins of each term below, and you’ll find the answer key on the next page.
Ellen Gutoskey
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