“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo” and “To be, or not to be” are some of literatures most prized lines, generally speaking, they are also the most renown quotes from Shakespearean writing.

Though William died almost 400 years ago, many would be surprised to see how much of an impact he still has on today’s language. The titles of his plays are well known by many, but quotations from his works are used on a daily basis, incorporated into our everyday language. Without our even knowing, we are quoting the playwright time after time.  He has coined more phrases in the English language than any other writer. Here are some examples of how Shakespeare has left an impact our everyday sayings:

Eat me out of house and home

The long and short of it

Method in the madness

Neither rhyme nor reason

One fell swoop

Seen better days

A sorry sight

Elbow room

Love is blind

Shakespeare can also be credited with the creation of many of today’s words. Having used over 21,000 of them in the writing of his plays, sonnets and poem, the Oxford English Dictionary acclaims him as the first to use the following words, along with nearly 3,000 others:

Fashionable

Arch-villain

Cheap

Go-between

Outbreak

Bedazzle

Embrace

Sanctimonious

Pander

Whether or not he was actually the first to use these has been debated to great lengths by scholars. It is absolutely impossible to say with any level of certainty who was the first person to coin a phrase or indeed, to define when a word was first. Several of them believe that may just be attributed to the bard, as their documentation only goes back as far as his works. However, it cannot be doubted, that in many cases, it is the work of William Shakespeare that has made them popular. The following renown sayings are often accredited to the bard himself; however each of them has earlier documentation despite being used in Shakespeare’s work:

All that glisters (glistens) is not gold

Give the devil his due

Laughing stock

The naked truth

It’s Greek to me

In a pickle

Out of the question

The long and the short of it

Little did Shakespeare know the profound impact that his legacy would leave on future generations. Today his work is quoted to no end in films and television; his sonnets have been composed into music and incorporated into songs. In excess of 400 films of the Bards plays have been produced, the most any authors work has fashioned in any language. Many of the films stay true to the great playwright’s dialogue, others just focusing on the plot.