Shakespeare didn't come up with most of the famous phrases in his plays but was credited with them because of a fault with the Oxford English dictionary, a leading scholar claims.

一位著名的学者称，莎士比亚在他的作品中并没有发明那些著名的短语，但是由于牛津词典的错误，很多人相信这些短语是莎士比亚发明的。

Mr McInnis argues that it is actually the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) that has attributed the phrases to Shakespeare, but it is 'biased'.

麦金尼斯博士认为事实上《牛津英语词典》将这些短语归功于莎士比亚，但是这是一种“偏见”。

'The Complete Works of Shakespeare was frequently raided for early examples of word use, even though words or phrases might have been used earlier, by less famous or less literary people,' he writes in the University of Melbourne magazine.

《莎翁全集》经常被拿来当做早期词语用法的参考，尽管这些词可能在更早之前被那些不是那么有名，或者不是那么具有文学性的人使用过了。

那么究竟有哪些短语明明不是莎翁发明，却把功劳归于他了呢？我们来举几个例子：

'Its' all Greek to me,' which appears in playwright Robert Greene's The Scottish History of James The Fourth before in Julius Ceaser.

“如闻天书”在《凯撒大帝》之前就已经出现在罗伯特·格林的《苏格兰史：詹姆斯四世》中。

'A wild goose chase,' is credited as first appearing in Romeo and Juliet by the OED, but it had appeared at least six times in English poet Gervase Markham's book about horsemanship a few years earlier in 1593.

“徒劳无功”在《牛津英语词典》中被认为是第一次出现在《罗密欧与朱丽叶》里，但是这个短语1593之前几年就在英国诗人哲瓦斯·马克汉姆有关于马术的书中至少出现过6次。

'Eaten out of house and home' is thought to first appear in Henry IV part two, written in the 1590s, but examples from as early as 1578 have been found.

“食大如牛”被认为第一次出现在《亨利四世》第二部分，写于19世纪60年代，但是早于1578年就被发现有相关例子。

'Without rhyme or reason' was thought to come from As You Like it but earlier versions can be traced back to the 1400s. 

“无缘无故”被认为是出自莎士比亚的《皆大欢喜》，但是最早的版本可以追溯到14世纪。

However, Shakespeare is thought to have made them more 'concise' and 'catchy'.He did still invent most of his famous quotations, including 'to make an ass of oneself'.'His audiences had to understand at least the gist of what he meant, so his words were mostly in circulation already or were logical combinations of pre-existing concepts,' writes Dr McInnis.

但是莎士比亚也被认为将这些词变得更加“简洁”和“郎朗上口”。他还发明了很多著名的语录，比如“让……看起来很蠢”。麦金尼斯博士写道：“莎士比亚的读者们必须要理解他到底在说什么，所以他使用的词语大部分一定早已流行开来，要么就是一些现存概念的逻辑组合”。

相关阅读：莎士比亚发明的10个常用英文单词>>>