My salad days!

IDIOMS

SHAKESPEARE’S IDIOMATIC
CONTRIBUTION TO THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Have you ever thought about
Shakespeare’s influence on
the English language?
There are lots of phrases from Shakespeare
which have become part of the English language

The mind's eye;

To the manner
born;
It out-Herods
Herod; The answer is Hamlet.
A sea of troubles;
Dog will have his
day;
There's the rub.
WHAT’S AN IDIOM?
A sequence of words which has a
different meaning as a group from the
meaning it would have if you understood
each word separately.
To kick
the bucket
When you complain
about a loss from the
 WHEN ARE IDIOMS USED?

In a wide variety of contexts and situations.

In spoken language and also in written
English, especially journalism

CHARACTERISTICS

FLEXIBLE
BECOME CLICHÉS (expressions) CAN BE SHORTENED…
 BRITISH AND AMERICAN IDIOMS

Do a bunk (UK) Sweating bullets (USA)

Leave without telling Very worried

anyone
 HOW MANY IDIOMS ARE THERE?

LONGMAN HAS OVER 6000

IDIOMS IN ITS DICTIONARY!!!
 Salad days
Meaning

The days of one's youthful inexperience.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, 1606:

CLEOPATRA: My salad days,

When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
 "What fools men are in their salad days."

Salad Days was later used as the title of a highly successful is a musical,
which premiered at the Bristol Old Vic in 1954.
I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

Meaning
Display your feelings openly, for all
to see.

Origin
From Shakespeare's Othello,
1604:
Make the beast with two backs
Meaning
Partners engaged in sexual intercourse.

Origin
This modern-sounding phrase is in fact at least as early as
Shakespeare.
He used it in Othello, 1604:

Iago:
"I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now
making the beast with two backs”.
 Wild goose chase
Meaning

A pursuit of something that is unlikely to be caught.

Origin

This is old and appears to be one of the many phrases

introduced to the language by Shakespeare. The first recorded
citation is from Romeo and Juliet, 1592:

"Nay, if our wits run the Wild-Goose chase, I am done:

For thou hast more of the Wild-Goose in one of thy wits,
then I am sure I have in my whole five."
 Cold comfort

Meaning
Slight consolation or encouragement in the face of a
reverse.

Origin
This dates back to the 14th century. It was used in early
literature by several authors, Chaucer and Shakespeare
used it several times.

The Taming of the Shrew

When he heard that he had lost his job, it was
cold comfort to learn that he could keep his car.

Idiom definition
When he heard that he had lost his job, it was
little help to learn that he could keep his car.
 Green-eyed monster
Meaning
Jealousy.
Origin
Green is a colour associated with sickness.
Green is also the colour of many unripe foods that cause stomach pains.
The phrase was used by, and possibly coined by, Shakespeare to denote
jealousy, in The Merchant of Venice, 1600

In Othello, Shakespeare also alludes to cats as green-eyed

monsters in the way that they play with mice before killing them.
 Tower of strength
Origin

From Shakespeare's Richard III –

'The king's name is a tower of strength'.

 To be in a pickle
Meaning

To have problems that are difficult to

solve.

Shakespeare appears to be the first

to use in a pickle, in THE TEMPEST
ALONSO:
And Trinculo is reeling ripe: where should they
Find this grand liquor that hath gilded 'em?
How camest thou in this pickle?

TRINCULO:
I have been in such a pickle since I
saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of
my bones: I shall not fear fly-blowing.
The most celebrated personage ever to be literally in a pickle was
Admiral Horatio Nelson.
The Tempest, 1611:
 Hoist by your own petard
Meaning
Injured by the device that you intended to use to
injure others.

Origin
A petard is or rather was, as they have long since fallen out of use, a small engine of
war used to blow breaches in gates or walls. They were originally metallic and
bell-shaped but later cubical wooden boxes.

Shakespeare gives the line to Hamlet (1603):

"For tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his owne petar".
 Milk of human kindness
Meaning
Care and compassion for others.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Macbeth, 1623:

"Yet doe I feare thy Nature, It is too full o' th' Milke of
humane kindnesse."
 To be / make strange bedfellows

Origin
From Shakespeare's The Tempest:

Alas, the storm is come again! my best way is

to creep under his gaberdine;
there is no other shelter hereabouts:
misery acquaints a man with
strange bed-fellows. I will here shroud till
the dregs of the storm be past.
 Mum's the word
Meaning
Keep quiet - say nothing.

Origin
Mum; not mother but 'mmmmm', the humming
sound made with a closed mouth.

Used by Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 2:

"Seal up your lips and give no words but mum."

 A fool's paradise
Meaning
A state of happiness based on false hope.

Origin
An early phrase, first recorded in the Paston Letters, 1462:
"I wold not be in a folis paradyce."

Shakespeare later used it in Romeo and Juliet.

 A foregone conclusion
Meaning
A decision made before the evidence for it is
known. An inevitable conclusion.
Origin
From Shakespeare's Othello, 1604:
 It’s (all) Greek to me

Meaning
It is unintelligible to me.
Origin
From Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, 1601:

but, for mine own

part, it was Greek to me.
 As dead as a doornail
Meaning
Dead - devoid of life (when applied to people, plants or animals).
Finished with - unusable (when applied to inanimate objects).

Origin
This is old - at least 14th century. There's a reference to it in print
in 1350:
"For but ich haue bote of mi bale I am ded as dorenail."
Shakespeare used it in King Henry VI, 1590:
 Without rhyme or reason
Meaning
A thing which has neither rhyme nor reason makes no sense,
from either a poetic or logical standpoint.

Origin
This line originates in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, 1590:
Vanish / disappear into thin air

Meaning
Disappear without trace.

Origin
Shakespeare came close to this phrase in Othello, 1604:
Shakespeare didn't put the two together to make
vanish into thin air, though.
It is said that the first use of that phrase, which is clearly an
adaptation of Shakespeare's terms, appeared in The Edinburgh
Advertiser, April 1822, in a piece about the imminent conflict
between Russia and Turkey:

The latest communications make these visions "vanish into

thin air."
 The game is up
Meaning
The original meaning was the game is
over - all is lost. More recently
it has come to be used to mean we have
seen through your tricks – your deceit is
exposed.
Your dishonesty has been discovered.

Origin
 A sea change
Meaning
A definite and important change in a
situation or in people’s opinions
Origin
From Shakespeare's
The Tempest, 1610:
 All that glitters is not gold
Meaning
A showy article may not necessarily be
valuable.

Origin
The 12th century French thelogian Alain
de Lille wrote
Shakespeare 'all that glisters is not gold'.
From
The Merchant of Venice, 1596:
 Every dog has its day
Meaning
Even the most unimportant person has a
time in their life when they are successful
and noticed
Origin

The dog will have his day

Hamlet, act 5, scene 1

But it was a proverb as early as the 1520s

 Have an itching palm
Meaning

Used about someone in an official job

who is willing to take money from people
and do things he or she should not do.

Origin

Julius Caesar, Act 4, Scene 3

Do sth as (if) to the manner born
Meaning

Used to say that someone does somehing

easily and naturally, although it is an unusua
and unfamiliar thing for them to do so.

It was her first lesson, but she taught as if to

the manner born Origin

Hamlet, Act 1, scene 4

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'Shotgun marriage'
The Good Friday Agreement was the
political equivalent of a shotgun
wedding! Most Unionists felt that a
gun was put to their head.
A storm in a teacup