Wiktionary

Shakespeare

English

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William Shakespeare

Alternative forms

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Etymology

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A common Middle English surname meaning spearman, corresponding to shake (“to 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:
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Shakespeare (plural Shakespeares)

  1. A surname.
    • 1913, Katharine Lee Bates, Lilla Weed, compilers, Shakespeare: Selective Bibliography and Biographical Notes, [Wellesley, Mass.]: Wellesley College, page 33:
      The name Shakespeare occurs from the 13th century on in the records of various English counties. The first Shakespeare as yet discovered in Warwickshire is one Thomas, a felon, who fled from the law in 1359. Toward the end of the fourteenth century there were landed Shakespeares at Baddesley, and this family held its own into the sixteenth.
  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, of which there are a great number 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) Any form or style of language that is eloquent, especially in 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, […]

Verb

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Shakespeare (third-person singular simple present Shakespeares, present participle Shakespearing, simple past and past participle Shakespeared)

  1. (intransitive) To act or perform in a play of the works of Shakespeare.

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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