• bardolatry •
Pronunciation: bahr-dahl-ê-tri, -chri • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass
Meaning: Idolization of William Shakespeare.
Notes: Here is an obviously concocted word that has stuck and propagated. The personal noun is bardolater and bardolatrous is the quality adjective. All are used fairly often, especially by British writers.
In Play: 
George Bernard Shaw once famously wrote: "The familiar plea of the Bardolatrous ignoramus, that Shakespeare's coarseness was a part of the manners of his time." Now everybody is using it: "Judging by the growth of bardolatry, Shakespeare may have become England's only deceased cult leader."
Word History: Today's Good Word and its descendants were all invented at the onset of the 20th century by George Bernard Shaw, a man fascinated by the English language (see the box below). To make his word up, Shaw blended bard + -(id)olatry, now considered a combining form in English. Bard was borrowed from Scotts Gaelic bàrd "poet". Bard descended from PIE gwere- "to raise the voice, praise", found also in Welsh bardd "poet", Irish bhard "bard", and Breton barzh "poet". Gwere- also contributed to Sanskrit grnati "sings, praises", Latin gratus "beloved, dear, agreeable", Albanian gërthas "to shout", Lithuanian girti "to praise" and gerbti "to respect".
Idol, of course, underlies idolatry. It began its life as PIE weid- "to see, know", which popped up in Latin as videre "to see", Russian as videt' "to see", Lithuanian įvaizdis "image", Welsh gwedd "appearance", English wise and wit, and German wissen "to know". Greek dropped the W for its eidolon "image, apparition", so Latin borrowed this word as idolum with the same meaning. French turned idolum into idole before English borrowed it.
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