shakespeare
/ˈʃeɪkspɪɹ/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.00 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "He is reading Shakespeare."
- "I'm surprised that even the allusion to Hamlet flew over his head. Even someone who barely knows Shakespeare might catch that one!"
- "This may not be poetry, but in competition with "Ryan has good velocity and excellent location" it is pure Shakespeare."
- "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, […]"
Etymology
A common Middle English surname meaning spearman, corresponding to shake (“to brandish a weapon”) + spear.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: -
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈʃeɪkspɪɹ/
- British English: /ˈʃeɪkspɪə/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in People.
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Phrases
Synonyms
the Bard
Shakey