Have you ever used the word “puking”? Or “gossip”? Or “lonely”?

Have you ever used the phrase “catch a cold”? Or “wild goose chase”? Or “it’s all Greek to me”? Or “good riddance to bad rubbish”? Or “what the dickens”?

Of course you have, which goes to show relevant Shakespeare is to us today – because all of these terms of everyday speech were actually invented by him. In fact, Shakespeare coined many words that sound so modern to the ear you’d swear they were invented only in the twentieth century.

Words like "advertising", for example.

And “manager”. And “fashionable”. And “marketable”. And ‘metamorphosise’. And “skim milk”. And “bedroom”. And even “zany”. All these words were originally coined by Shakespeare, over 400 years ago.

A fantastically playful imagination

The fact is that Shakespeare added over 2,000 new words to our vocabulary – more than any other person in history. This, even as other people have become famous for inventing just one new word – like Richard Daly for “quiz”, or James Joyce for “quark”, or young Milton Sirotta for “googol”. Shakespeare managed to do all this because he had such a fantastically playful imagination, combined with a rebellious rejection of linguistic convention.

Thus he joyfully turned nouns into verbs. and vice versa; he added prefixes and suffixes with abandon; he fused and tweaked and truncated; he pillaged other languages shamelessly; he whipped up words out of sounds (or out of nowhere).

Words Shakespeare gave us

Cold–blooded

Upon my party! Thou cold-blooded slave, hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side…?

— King John, Act III, Scene II

Obscene

I did encounter that obscene and preposterous event, that draweth from my snow-white pen the ebon-coloured ink.

— 'Love’s Labour’s Lost', Act I, Scene II

Assassination

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly: if the assassination could trammel up the consequence

— 'Macbeth', Act I, Scene VII

Rant
Nay, and thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou.

— 'Hamlet', Act V, Scene I

Blood-stained

Why dost not comfort me, and help me out from this unhallowed and blood-stained hole?

— Titus Andronicus, Act II Scene III

Addiction

…the art and practice part of life, must be the mistress to this theoric: which is a wonder how his grace should glean it, since his addiction was to courses vain

— 'Henry V', Act I, Scene I

Eyeball

Then crush this herb into Lysander's eye; whose liquor hath this virtuous property to take from thence all error with his might, and make his eyeballs roll with wonted sight

— 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Act III, Scene II

Bump

And yet, I warrant, it had upon its brow a bump as big as a young cockerel's stone

— 'Romeo and Juliet', Act I, Scene III

Mimic

When I did him at this advantage take, an ass's nole I fixed on his head: anon his Thisbe must be answered, and forth my mimic comes.

— 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', Act III, Scene II

Frugal

Why, he hath not been thrice in my company! What should I say to him? I was then frugal of my mirth: Heaven forgive me!

— 'The Merry Wives of Windsor', Act II, Scene I

However, Shakespeare’s invention of new words and phrases is just one of the things that keeps him relevant to our times. Perhaps as important is the fact that his themes and characters are so timeless. He wrote about things like love, friendship, betrayal, snobbery, racism, the place of women in society, sexuality, crime, revenge and murder, all of which are as relevant to us today as they were to any sixteenth century English theatre-goer.

It’s not just themes. His characters are fickle and steadfast, deceptive and forthright, mean and magnanimous, envious and contented, manipulative and manipulated – just like you and me. Lady Macbeth could easily be today’s corporate bitch; Hamlet is so today’s mixed-up post-adolescent.

Pushing our emotional buttons

Shakespeare wrote with a unique understanding of the human condition, which remains unchanged across time and geography. Which is why Othello translates so effectively into today’s Omkara, Hamlet is transformed into Haider and why Macbeth becomes both Maqbool and, with equal ease, the Japanese Kumonosu-jo (Throne of Blood). In fact, it is Shakespeare’s films (and other contemporary adaptations) which best demonstrate his timeless, universal appeal.

Orson Welles was the first one to make this point, stunning the world by setting Julius Caesar in a Fascist 1930s Italy; many years later, Alyque Padamsee would situate the play, equally aptly, to Indira Gandhi’s 1970s (with a woman playing Caesar).

Lawrence Olivier made Henry V in 1944 with the objective of inspiring Allied troops for the invasion of Europe; Richard Eyre and Ian McKellen set Richard III, chillingly, in a pre-War Britain divided on whether to support Hitler or not.

Baz Luhrman put Romeo + Juliet in the middle of a gang-war-riddled Miami (Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein had earlier turned it into West Side Story and set it in a blue-collar New York, with music and elaborate choreography). Gil Junger turned The Taming of the Shrew into 10 Things I Hate About You and set it in a high-school in Seattle, fizzing with teenage hormones.

Since the early 2000s, Shakespeare seems to have increasingly captured filmmakers’ imagination with all the possibilities of his rich, compelling human drama – resulting in a succession of fascinating modern-day interpretations.

In Michael Almereyda’s Hamlet, for example, Ethan Hawke plays the hero as a neurotic film student in contemporary New York. And Kenneth Branagh playfully set Love’s Labour’s Lost in a decadent Oxbridge of the 1930s (with lots of old Broadway song-and-dance numbers);

Ralph Fiennes set Coriolanus in the brutal Balkan Conflict of the 1990s, Rupert Goold picked Stalin’s megalomaniacal Soviet Union for Macbeth. Even Joss Whedon, director of box-office blockbusters like Toy Story and The Avengers, suddenly decided to turn Shakespearean, creating a slick, clever little Much Ado About Nothing, set in martini-swigging, Versace-designed suburban California.

And yet the films worked perfectly, demonstrating to us once again Shakespeare’s extraordinary power to push an audience’s – any audience’s – emotional buttons. Clearly, Shakespeare belongs to no time and no place – and therefore, to all times and all places.