The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

by Bill Bryson

No one in any tongue has ever made greater play of his language. He coined some 2,000 words—an astonishing number—and gave us countless phrases. As a phrasemaker there has never been anyone to match him. Among his inventions: one fell swoop, in my mind’s eye, more in sorrow than in anger, to be in a pickle, bag and baggage, vanish into thin air, budge an inch, play fast and loose, go down the primrose path, the milk of human kindness, remembrance of things past, the sound and the fury, to thine own self be true, to be or not to be, cold comfort, to beggar all description, salad days, flesh and blood, foul play, tower of strength, to be cruel to be kind, and on and on and on and on. And on. He was so wildly prolific that he could put two catchphrases in one sentence, as in Hamlet’s observation: “Though I am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honored in the breach than the observance.” He could even mix metaphors and get away with it, as when he wrote: “Or to take arms against a sea of troubles.”