Othello IV: Act 3 Scenes 3-4

Shakespeare is atypical as an author because, despite the quality of his writing, he occasionally came across a phrase that he wanted to express, but couldn't, or couldn't and maintain his rhythm. In such instances, he would invent his own word, and thus today we have words such as "eyeball" that Shakespeare invented purely for the sake of his own plays. Not all of his invented words "took," however, and Othello shows one such word - "exsufflicate" (III.iii.213). He took a Latin word and turned it into an English word (as would have been typical to invent a word, and as most educated people would have understood it due to their knowledge of Latin). The word combines the prefix "ex," meaning "out," with a "fl" sound that is present in words such as "flicker" (which likely has a similar root of "sufflicare"), "fly" and "flow," among other sound, to create a word that effectively communicates its meaning even to one who has no idea what the word means due to inherent phonetic associations. In this way, Shakespeare transcends the typical author, because Shakespeare doesn't even need to use actual English words to convey his meaning - sounds and subsections of words are sufficient.