François Rabelais (c. 1494 – 1553)

In his Gargantua and Pantagruel Rabelais provided Shakespeare with such material as the character of the pedant Holofernes in Love's Labour's Lost. Rabelais' use of his native tongue was astoundingly original, lively, and creative. He introduced dozens of Greek, Latin, and Italian loan-words and direct translations of Greek and Latin compound words and idioms into French. He also used many dialectal forms and invented new words and metaphors, some of which have become part of the standard language and are still used today. Rabelais is arguably one of the authors who have enriched the French language in the most significant way. His works are also known for being filled with sexual double-entendre, dirty jokes and bawdy songs that can still surprise or even shock modern readers. Shakespeare approximates to this role in the development of the English language. Picture and some data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).