Before Shakespeare, there was no English word for a bedroom
Prior to Shakespeare coining or recording 'bedroom', the sleeping space in a home was called a 'bedchamber'. The word 'bedroom' appears for the first time in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600). Similarly, Shakespeare appears to have coined or first recorded 'fashionable', 'advertising', 'lonely', 'generous', 'obscene', 'eventful', 'lackluster', 'swagger', 'bedroom', 'eyeball', and hundreds of other words. Many of these filled genuine gaps in English vocabulary for concepts that existed but had no word.
It's one thing to know Shakespeare invented words. It's another to realise that 'bedroom' — a word so fundamental to describing daily life that it appears in every real estate listing — simply didn't exist in English before 1600.
“Before Shakespeare, there was no English word for 'bedroom' — people called it a 'bedchamber'. Shakespeare also coined 'fashionable', 'lonely', 'eyeball', 'swagger', and 'generous'. 📚 #OddlyHuman”