This week begins a fun series on words that Shakespeare coined! The words themselves may or may not have a lot of interesting etymology otherwise…but they’re making this list simply because they were introduced to us by the Bard. 😉
Cold-hearted is one such word, first appearing in Shakespeare around 1600. Just a decade or so before this we saw the introduction of cold-blooded, as in “someone without emotion, lacking the usual sympathies,” to which cold-hearted is clearly related. The belief at the time was that our blood literally warmed up as we got more excited (rather understandable given that we feel flushed and hot). So naturally, words and phrases were created to capture the opposite too.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. Having successfully launched two homeschool grads, she now spends her time writing fiction, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years, as well as a fantasy series and contemporary mysteries and romances. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.