Five ways Dickens expanded the English language
Among the 9,218 quotations from {Dickens’} works in the OED, 265 words and compounds are cited as having been first used by him in print and another 1,586 as having been used in a new sense. Source
1. Like Shakespeare, Charles Dickens popularised words which were previously unused or obscure. was in existence before Dombey and Son, for example, while boredom precedes Bleak House.
2. He introduced street-slang to the general reading public. His first novel The Pickwick Papers (1837) popularised butter-fingers (“a clumsy person”), flummox (“bewilder”) and sawbones (surgeon).
Mr Waller comments draws attention to the process:
What! Don’t you know what a sawbones is, sir?’ inquired Mr. Weller. ‘I thought everybody know’d as a sawbones was a surgeon.’ — Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837
3. No Post-Shakespearian writer has had a greater impact on idiomatic English. Two examples from Bleak House:
not to put too fine a point on it Mr Snagsby
you have got that person's number Mr Bucket
4. Dickens liked to use existing words to create convincing new ones. Most frequently this involves converting adjectives to nouns: messy to messiness and creepy to the creeps:
She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called ‘the creeps’. — Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers, 1837
5. Vivid characterisation created numerous eponyms - names that become associated with specific character traits. Their names - Scrooge, McCawber, Gradgrind, Bumble - instantly evoke specific character traits - read more here