Interesting Words - Shakespeare

Health researchers are blaming Shakespeare for promoting a negative attitudes towards imperfect skin.

(Seemingly the language used in his plays has helped cause social stigmas linked to skin conditions. 

A research paper from dermatologists [PDF] in Nottingham, Leicester and Derby "Shakespeare may be to blame for the negative connotations of skin disease".  They mentioned phrases such as "Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle",  "a pox upon him" and "patch'd with foul moles and eye-offending marks".

The fact is, Shakespeare used language in a creative way: Take what is probably the best (worst) insult ever written, from King Lear:-

"A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.

It makes you wonder if he's to blame for negative attitudes towards dogs too.)