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-inheritin...