Wiktionary

Shakespeare

English

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William Shakespeare

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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Common Middle English surname meaning "spearman", corresponding to shake (“brandish a weapon”) + spear.

Pronunciation

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  • Audio (Southern England):(file)
  • Hyphenation: Shake‧speare

Proper noun

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Shakespeare

  1. A surname.
  2. William Shakespeare, an English playwright and poet of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
    Synonyms: the Bard, Shakey
  3. His works or media adaptations of his works.
    He is reading Shakespeare.
  4. A place name:
    1. A village in Perth East township, Ontario, Canada, named after the playwright.
    2. A ghost town in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, United States.

Usage notes

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  • William Shakespeare's manuscripts use a great many different spellings of his surname, too many to list here. (At the time, name spellings were much more variable than today, see Spelling of Shakespeare's name for a list.)

Derived terms

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Descendants

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  • → Vietnamese: Sếch-xpia

Translations

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Noun

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Shakespeare (countable and uncountable, plural Shakespeares)

  1. (uncountable) Eloquent language, especially English; poetry.
    • 1979 October 10, Russell Maker, “Highbrows Ruin Baseball's Language”, in Toledo Blade:
      This may not be poetry, but in competition with "Ryan has good velocity and excellent location" it is pure Shakespeare.
  2. (countable) A playwright of the standing of William Shakespeare
    • 1997, Vivien Allen, Hall Caine: portrait of a Victorian romancer:
      Caine, he said, might be a budding Shakespeare but in Shakespeare's time all it took to put on a play was a barn, a crude stage, […]

See also

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Portuguese

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Pronunciation

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Proper noun

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Shakespeare m

  1. Shakespeare (William Shakespeare, English playwright)

Derived terms

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