The History of English in 10 MInutes

I've only watched the first minute. "Give" is Old English, not Old Norse. I believe "bishop" was already in Germanc before the Anglo-Saxons got to England (could be wrong). There were Christians in the north of England (converted by Irish missionaries) when St Augustine arrived in the south of 597.

I had definite reservations about the scholarship, but I enjoyed the puns and the cheeky style.

My German etymological dictionary confirms that Bischoff/biscop/bishop was an early borrowing, before the Anglo-Saxon migration.

They should have somebody look at it who knew this stuff. "The History of English in Ten Minutes, with one mistake every twenty seconds" leaves something to be desired.

Did you know that Shakespeare alone contributed more than 2000 new words to the English language?

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Shakespeare's work serves as the first written record of 2000 words? Presumably at that time not a lot was written down so anyone who wrote enough that remains to this day could claim the first citation of various words and phrases. I could be wrong.

No, you're right. A majority of the 2000 are probably coinages, but by no means all.

It's not just that there are realtively few other sources; it's that people read Shakespeare a lot more than they read, say, religious tracts from c. 1600. So the first uses in print by Shakespeare are more likely to be spotted and noted.

Did you know that Shakespeare alone contributed more than 2000 new words to the English language?

I spotted that immediately. The unit on Shakespeare is worse--it begins with Shakespeare inventing the words. But it ends with the same thought that Vinny had. Willie is standing on one side of a wall with a cup held to his ear, trying to overhear a man & woman conversing on the other side of the wall. The narrator notes that Shakespeare didn't necessarily invent the words, but that people prefer to use his works as a source because "there is more cross dressing (lady's elaborate costume is whisked off to reveal a hairy guy in underpants) and poking of eyes (other man pokes stick at Mr. Underpants).

The 2000 number for Shakespeare is based on OED entries, but (as the FOAK notes): "the Victorian scholars who read texts for the first edition of the OED paid special attention to Shakespeare: his texts were read more thoroughly, and cited more often, so he is often credited with the first use of words, or senses of words, which can, in fact, be found in other writers."

A majority of the 2000 are probably coinages

I can't help thinking that if I made up more than 1,000 new words I would be more likely hailed as a madman.

I couldn't even get urbandictionary.com to accept "quandarybrag".

I hadn't realized that Urban Dictionary had standards.

The number that are actual coinages and not just first recordings, or rather first known recordings, is of course unknowable. But when Macbeth says

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

it seems that he was providing a gloss for "multitudinous" and "incarnadine" (both first recorded there) in the next line, so that if you couldn't figure them out from the roots and the context, you'd have some help. It wouldn't surprise me if they were both genuine conages. (It also wouldn't surprise if at least "multitudinous" had been independently coined on more than one occasion.)