Part of the Happy Birthday Shakespeare project*.
On the Bard’s birthday this past Monday, I was thinking about how amazing Shakespeare was and how we could all be a little more like him.
Become a prolific writer of famous plays and sonnets? Unlikely (certainly for me).
Learn to be a legendary stage actor? Hmmmm. Strike two.
Then, I remembered this August 2009 episode of WNYC’s Radiolab (which may be the best podcast on the planet). In it, James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia talks about how Shakespeare…
behaved more like a chemist than a writer: by smashing words together–words like eye and ball–he created new words, and new ways of seeing the world.
That’s something we can all do and it’s my challenge for you today.
Invent a new word or phrase
Shakespeare invented (or at least was the first to use on stage or in print) the following words or phrases:
- A dish fit for the gods
- A fool’s paradise
- A foregone conclusion
- A plague on both your houses
- A sea change
- A sorry sight
- All corners of the world
- All of a sudden
- All that glitters is not gold
- All the world’s a stage
- All’s well that ends well
- As luck would have it
- At one fell swoop
- Dead as a doornail
- Discretion is the better part of valor
- Eaten out of house and home
- Every dog will have its day
- Fair play
- Fancy free
- Fight fire with fire
- Fool’s paradise
- Forever and a day
- Foul play
- Good riddance
- Heart’s content
- Hot-blooded
- In a pickle
- In stitches
- It’s Greek to me
- Kill with kindness
- Lie low
- Like the Dickens
- Love is blind
- Night owl
- Pound of flesh
- Pure as the driven snow
- Star crossed lovers
- The game is up
- The short and the long of it
- Truth will out
- Up in arms
- What’s done is done
- Wild goose chase
- Woe is me
Redefine an existing word or phrase in a new way
In 1998, Sebastian Junger** invented the phrase “the perfect storm” and wrote a bestselling book with that title. Since then, this phrase has been used (sometimes poorly) to describe the convergence of a set of circumstances.
Before Seth Godin’s 2008 bestseller, the word “tribes” conjured mental images of Native American or African tribes. Seth gave it a new and important meaning. Long before that, he taught us all what a Purple Cow is.
Before Malcolm Gladwell taught us about success and what makes high achievers different, we thought of “outliers” as simply a statistical deviation. His groundbreaking book redefined the term.
More recently, Eric Ries mashed together learnings from lean manufacturing and the startup world to create the term and bestselling book, The Lean Startup.
My words and phrases
I’m working on a few myself:
- Champagne Moment – I’ve used this in a few public speeches about digital marketing and social media ROI. I define a “champagne moment” as a very specific objective to be celebrated. In locker room celebrations, professional athletes enthusiastically spray perfectly good champagne on each other when they win the championship. It’s because the teams have effectively defined their ”champagne moment”. Win the title. No title, no champagne. I use this analogy to challenge marketers to be more specific about their marketing objectives.
- Carpe Defect – This is a book I’m working on about turning mistakes into marketing.
- Metaskills – Another book and website project about important skills that aren’t taught in school. More soon.
Your turn…
Is there a problem that’s been bugging you for a while? Name the solution.
That startup idea that won’t go away? Give it a name.
That book rattling around in your head? Give it a title.
Let me know below in the comments. I’d love to hear some of your words or phrases.
* This post is part of the #happybirthdayshakespeare project organized by my friends and heroes AJ and Melissa Leon. Read more and watch a neat video here.
** Sebastian is a friend and former client.
