Coined by Shakespeare (who else?)

THE phrase ‘whiter than white’ was first coined by William Shakespeare.

A stanza in his 1593 poem Venus and Adonis tells the story of Venus, goddess of love, and her attempted seduction of Adonis.

It reads: ‘Who sees his true-love in her naked bed / Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white / But, when his glutton eye so full hath fed / His other agents aim at like delight?’

The phrase crept into later literature including MS Stanhope’s Almack’s edition two in 1826, which referred to ‘Lady Jemima, whiter than white, singing some lack-a-daisical ballad’.

It became accepted into popular culture over time – advertising campaigns claimed that Persil washing powder would make clothes ‘whiter than white’. The Oxford English Dictionary says the phrase means ‘extremely white’ and is frequently used to describe something as ‘morally pure’ or ‘having an untarnished reputation’.