Thursday, April 7, 2011

Colbert Meet Shakespeare


I was looking at one of those stories that pop up to entice you on the internet while I was checking my Yahoo! email. It's called "Who Knew" and is presented by Toyota and so of course there are short commercials by Toyota. Interestingly enough Regan Burns from the Comedy Central Show "Halfway Home" was in that commercial. So there's a connection right there to Stephen Colbert.

But even more fascinating than that is what it was about - William Shakespeare. It seems that the Bard would make up words, as many as 1600 of them. And one of the words that he made up was the word "bump." That's right,

b u m p

Where would Stephen be without Shakespeare? We wouldn't have the famous Colbert Bump. All those people who have gotten the Colbert Bump would be out of luck. And what would I have named this blog, Colbert Thingamajig?

Stephen Colbert owes a lot to William Shakespeare. I think he should thank Shakespeare and maybe even have him on The Colbert Report to do so in person. It's almost as if Shakespeare literally gave Stephen the actual "Colbert Bump."

And for those of you who just love made-up words, here's another good one for you: jilqui. It means a person who cheats at Scrabble by making up words. Rumor has it that it was made up during a game of Scrabble at a bar in Lake Wobegon back in the 1960s.

No comments: