In a reflection on novel-writing rules Jane Austen broke before they were even created, Orin Hargraves researched a list of words she is credited with having first used, in a post on this blog called Reading Jane. 

When we read Austen, the "how did she do it?" we puzzle about is smaller and more personal: how did she manage to write novels that, nearly two centuries after the fact, are (to us, anyway) more engrossing than anything that's splashed across this week's New York Times Book Review or Times Literary Supplement? It is even more remarkable that she pulled this off by breaking many of the rules about writing fiction, long before most of them were written.

We had a trawl through the OED for Austen citations, looking particularly at words for which Austen is the first cited author. Such a distinction usually doesn't indicate an author's coining of a word; it's more likely to indicate their having been the first person (so far discovered) in whose writings the word is recorded. Austen's "first author cited" words fall mainly into two categories: (1) a few words denoting domestic items, such as door-bell and sponge-cake; (2) a great many words that are regular derivatives of existing English words and therefore not necessarily new at the time of "first use" at all — they are simply word forms that are within the productive vocabulary of any accomplished native speaker and that rise to consciousness when there is a need for them: words like in-between, smarten up, spoilt (as an adjective), sympathizer, and unfastidious (all of which make their first appearance in Emma, which we're reading now). We think it is this class of words that is revealing about Austen as a writer: she didn't so much push the boundaries of English as fill in some of its empty corners in writing, confidently placing the right word in the place where it belonged, even if no one had done it before.

Want to see more of Jane Austen's words? Check out these free, interactive vocabulary lists:

Vocabulary from Emma Chapters 1-11, Chapters 12-23, Chapters 24-35, Chapters 36-47, Chapters 48-55.

Vocabulary from Pride and Prejudice Chapters 1-8, Chapters 9-17, Chapters 18-26, Chapters 27-37, Chapters 38-49, Chapters 50-61.

Vocabulary from Sense and Sensibility Chapters 1-10, Chapters 11-20, Chapters 21-30, Chapters 31-40, Chapters 41-50.