Born exactly 200 years ago today. I can't say that I've read a lot of his stuff, other than David Copperfield, which I trudged through in English class in high school. But there's no arguing that he's one of the greatest authors of all time.
And a major influence on the English language as well. Here are a few of words that he either invented personally, or "saved" from the linguistic dustbin : butter-fingers, sawbones, messiness, spiflication, whizz-bang, seediness, unpromisingly, flummox, kibosh, devil-may-care, angry-eyed, hunger-worn, proud-stomached, fancy-dressed, coffee-imbibing, ginger-beery, copying-clerk, crossing-sweeper, tousled, boredom, rampage, casualty ward, allotment garden, footlights, fingerless, fairy story, messiness, natural-looking, squashed, tintack, spectacularly,confusingly, and last-but-not-least, dustbin.
So Happy 200th Birthday, Mr. Dickens, sir! I think I'll pick up one of your works the next time I'm at the used-book store.
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