William Shakespeare quiz: do you know the meanings of these words?

last updated 22 April 2016

This St George's Day - 23 April 2018 - marks the 402nd anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare's greatest contribution to literature is his use of the English language, in which he showed himself an expert both in style and variety. Using as many as 28,000 words in his writing, 1,700 of which he coined himself, the Bard's vocabulary has been dazzling and confounding readers for hundreds of years.

For every Shakespearean word that has remained in use - luggage, swagger and cold-blooded were all coined by the playwright - stands another that has thoroughly fallen by the wayside. Few people these days talk of putting on a half-kirtle (jacket) or how their favourite football team's defeat left them amort (dejected).