Shakespeare

• Shakespere, Shakspeare, Shakspere (obsolete)

Common Middle English surname meaning "spearman", corresponding to shake (“brandish a weapon”) + spear.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈʃeɪkspɪɹ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈʃeɪkspɪə/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Shake‧speare

Shakespeare

1. A surname.
2. William Shakespeare, an English playwright and poet of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries

   Synonyms: the Bard, Shakey

3. His works or media adaptations of his works.

   He is reading Shakespeare.

4. A place name:
   1. A village in Perth East township, Ontario, Canada, named after the playwright.
   2. A ghost town in Hidalgo County, New Mexico, United States.

• William Shakespeare's manuscripts use a great many different spellings of his surname, too many to list here. (At the time, name spellings were much more variable than today, see Spelling of Shakespeare's name for a list.)

Shakespeare (countable and uncountable, plural Shakespeares)

1. (uncountable) Eloquent language, especially English; poetry.
   • 1979 October 10, Russell Maker, “Highbrows Ruin Baseball's Language”, in Toledo Blade:

     This may not be poetry, but in competition with "Ryan has good velocity and excellent location" it is pure Shakespeare.

2. (countable) A playwright of the standing of William Shakespeare
   • 1997, Vivien Allen, Hall Caine: portrait of a Victorian romancer:

     Caine, he said, might be a budding Shakespeare but in Shakespeare's time all it took to put on a play was a barn, a crude stage, […]

• Category:English terms first attested in Shakespeare

Shakespeare m

1. Shakespeare (William Shakespeare, English playwright)

• shakespeariano