LANGUAGE | LISTICLE

Phraseology: 12 Idioms Started by Shakespeare (Part 2)

All of these commons phrases appeared in Shakespearean plays

Photo by Max Muselmann on Unsplash

In a previous article, I explored twelve famous idioms whose origins could be traced to works of Shakespeare. You can find that article here: Phraseology: 12 Idioms Started by Shakespeare (Part 1). I have also linked it at the bottom of this article if you want to wait to check it out.

A few of the Shakespearean phrases became even more popular after being used as titles for some famous works of literature. In 1931, Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, a phrase he borrowed from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Ray Bradbury published the science fiction novel Something Wicked This Way Comes in 1962. That phrase was used in Act 4 of Macbeth.

Here are twelve additional idioms that became widely used after Shakespeare first included them in his work.

Note: Again, I am not saying Shakespeare was necessarily the first one ever to utter the phrases; I am just saying that they became popular and continued to be used because they appeared in his plays.

1. “Flesh and blood”