In Shakespeare's Henry V II 1 line 71, Pistol, in a sword-fight, says "Give me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give". This word (fore-foot with the meaning fist) is one of Shakespeare's 5000 odd inventions. Well over 50 words prefixed 'fore-' were invented in his lifetime; to him alone we owe at least 15, including fore-end, forehead, forehand, foredoom, fore-rank, and foretell. Many didn't make it to the language, being only intended as witticisms.'Forenoon' for example, is superfluous to 'morning'.Some didn't even get to the dictionary. One in particular, probably because it hasn't been discovered. This is 'forescore', meaning 19. Disguised in the text (Winter's Tale, Act 4 Sc.3) as 'fourscore'. The passage in question runs: Clown: "Come on lay it by: and let's first see more ballads; we'll buy the other things anon". Autolycus: [the thief]: "Here's another ballad of a fish, That appeared upon the coast, on wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sang this ballad against the hard hearts of maids: it was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish, for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her: the ballad is very pitiful, and as true". This is supposed to be a fantastic burlesque upon contemporary ballads, with the nonsensical date 80th April. Maybe that was the outward deliberate red herring - 'Shake-speare' often has puns with double and even triple meanings, he never wrote nonsense without hiding something. But in David Garrick's 1758 version of the play ('Florizel and Perdita', but the text mainly unchanged) the word doesn't fool him - he spells it 'forescore', with no doubts as to its intended meaning. Perhaps someone with a similar name (Shaksper, without the hyphen) 'stole' (i.e. claimed and got away with it) the plays, frequented the Mermaid Tavern, refused to exchange identities, was 'washed up' (born) on the coast of Stratford-on-Avon 40,000 fathoms (43 miles) from the sea (Bristol Channel), on 19th April 1564 (which happens by a one in seven chance to be a Wednesday), being exactly the usual period of a week before the date he is known to have been baptised. There being no justification for the traditional/customary birthdate of 23rd April, chosen merely because there must be a date for medals etc, it's a Sunday, it's St. Georges Day, and it is the same day he died. Is 'the real author' here taking a 'dig' at him? Not that I want to debate authorship, beyond that the only scholarly view for a century or so has been that we simply don't know who wrote the plays.In spite of the invective poured on this view by those with commercial interests. Baker's Chronicle incidentally, for 1564, describes "a monstrous fish cast ashore in Lincolnshire in 1564, which measured...". And Baker's Chronicle also descibes an earthquake in Kinnaston on 17 Feb 1575: "The earth began to open and a Hill with a rock under it ...lifted itself to a great height, and began to travel,... it left a gaping distance forty foot broad, and FORESCORE ells long". An instance of alternative spelling of this word. Still, if the rest of the world thinks the date 80th April more likely than 19th, who am I to argue? John Barton

> In Shakespeare's Henry V II 1 line 71, Pistol, in a sword-fight, says "Give > me thy fist, thy fore-foot to me give". This word (fore-foot with the > meaning fist) is one of Shakespeare's 5000 odd inventions. Well over 50 > words prefixed 'fore-' were invented in his lifetime; to him alone we owe at > least 15... > John Barton Well, I'm not at all sure Shakespeare *invented* *any* word. His writings are the earliest records *that survived*, containing certain words: but we shouldn't go further than that. We can't even say what words were invented in his lifetime, or anybody else's. Only very rarely can we know exactly when words were invented - though the jargon-words of professions and trades are increasingly a major exception to that rule. Words can exist for hundreds of years before they make it into *written* language. Gordon Barlow