Appendix: An A-to-Z of Shakespeare's false friends

Summary

Some instances of false friends in Shakespeare were discussed in Chapter 7 (p. 156). This Appendix provides a further selection. Many more will be found on the Cambridge University Press website for this book, at www.cambridge.org/ 9780521700351. References to ‘first recorded user’ are to the citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.

awful (adjective) modern meaning: exceedingly bad, terrible

Since the eighteenth-century, the meaning of awful has weakened to that of a negative intensifier: we say such things as You've been an awful time and I'm an awful duffer. As an adverb, especially in American English, it can even be positive: That dinner was awful good. In Shakespeare, it was used only in its original Anglo-Saxon sense of ‘awe-inspiring, worthy of respect’. In Pericles, Gower describes Pericles as a ‘benign lord / That will prove awful both in deed and word’ (2.Chorus.4). This meaning is easy to spot when awful goes with words denoting power, such as sceptre, rule, and bench (of justice). It is a little more distracting when we see it used with general words, as when one of the outlaws in The Two Gentlemen of Verona tells Valentine that they have been ‘Thrust from the company of awful men’ (4.1.46).

belch (verb) modern meaning: noisily expel wind from the stomach

This word, in its modern meaning, has been in English since Anglo-Saxon times, and it early developed a figurative usage, describing the way people can give vent to their feelings as a cannon or volcano ‘belches’ fire.