Shakespeare made up more than 8.5 percent of his written vocabulary

From The Miracle of Language by Richard Lederer, page 93.

It is not enough that something be interesting or beautiful but that I want to find a pattern related to it or to quantify it as well. The aesthetic geek perhaps. Lederer speaks to the aesthetic geek.

An often neglected aspect of William Shakespeare's genius is that his words, as well as his works, were not just of an age, but for all time. He was, quite simply, the greatest wordmaker who ever lived. On-going research demonstrates that there are 20,138 lemmata (dictionary headwords) in Shakespeare's published works. That figure represents approximately forty percent of the total recorded for the English language up to the year 1623 - and Shakespeare could not have owned any dictionary in which he could have looked up these words! For purposes of comparison bear in mind that the written vocabulary of Homer totals approximately nine thousand words, of the King James Bible eight thousand, and of Milton ten thousand.

Of the 20,138 basewords that Shakespeare employs in his plays, sonnets, and other poems, his is the first known use of over 1,700 of them. The most verbally innovative of our authors and our all-time champion neologizer, Shakespeare made up more than 8.5 percent of his written vocabulary. Reading his works is like witnessing the birth of language itself.

This is almost inconceivable. Under what circumstances would anyone today read anyone who made up 9% of their own words? How would such an author even be perceived?

From a different perspective, how many people ever create something that lives on after them (other than in a biological fashion) that both ensure that their name remains in circulation and that continues to be used by millions or hundreds of millions. Shakespeare stands alone in so many ways.