@steveTu, I’m in your team. Though I am doubting myself now, I am sure I have said draipse not realising until this morning that there was no such word.
They say Shakespeare invented 1700 words. Did he? Or did he just commit to print for the first time words that already were widely spoken but not yet written?
I thought it was me! I knew 'drape' and 'drapes', but this was a separate word that became more apparent with draipsed and draipsing rather than draped and draping.
I always thought the same with Shakespeare - it would be odd for a playwright to coin new words and have the audience with that lost look on their collective face as they'd never heard the term before. I'd agree with you that it's more likely (to me), that the audience already knew the terms.
Discussing words which don’t actually exist, it got me thinking about words other languages have that we could use. The French, for example, have mie for a slice of bread without crusts. And years ago a Dutch friend tried to explain their concept of gezelligheid. Almost impossible to spell and hard to pronounce, we got round it by importing the Danish word hygge about 10 years ago.
Posts
They say Shakespeare invented 1700 words. Did he? Or did he just commit to print for the first time words that already were widely spoken but not yet written?
Here are some more
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50698/38-wonderful-foreign-words-we-could-use-english
Or when people say 'whats that going to learn you then'.
Grrrrr
Failure is always an option.
Does tautology count as pushing buttons?