Honorificabilitudinitatibus

Honorificabilitudinitatibus (''honōrificābilitūdinitātibus'', ) is the dative and ablative plural of the medieval Latin word ''honōrificābilitūdinitās'', which can be translated as "the state of being able to achieve honours". It is mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare's ''Love's Labour's Lost''.

As it appears only once in Shakespeare's works, it is a hapax legomenon in the Shakespeare canon. At letters, it is the second-longest word in the English language featuring only alternating consonants and vowels. The longest is Honorificicabilitudinitatibus, which has the same meaning.

Use in ''Love's Labour's Lost''

The word is spoken by the comic rustic Costard in Act V, Scene 1 of the play. It is used after an absurdly pretentious dialogue between the pedantic schoolmaster Holofernes and his friend Sir Nathaniel. The two pedants converse in a mixture of Latin and florid English. When Moth, a witty young servant, enters, Costard says of the pedants:

Use in Baconianism

The word has been used by adherents of the Baconian theory who believe Shakespeare's plays were written in steganographic cypher by Francis Bacon. In 1905 Isaac Hull Platt argued that it was an anagram for ''hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi'', Latin for "these plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world". His argument was given wide circulation by Edwin Durning-Lawrence in 1910, complete with a cryptonumerical attempt to prove it justified. The anagram assumes that Bacon would have Latinized his name as "Baco" or "Bacon" (the genitive case of which is "Baconis") rather than, as Samuel Schoenbaum argues, "Baconus", with genitive "Baconi".

It is far from the only possible anagram. In 1898, Paget Toynbee noted that the word contains a glorification of Dante by himself as its letters could be rearranged to form the phrase ''Ubi Italicus ibi Danti honor fit'' (Where there is an Italian, there honour is paid to Dante). In the 1970s, John Sladek noted that the word could also be anagrammatized as ''I, B. Ionsonii, uurit 'writ''a lift'd batch'', thus "proving" that Shakespeare's works were written by Ben Jonson. In 2012, in a column for the Calcutta ''Telegraph'', Stephen Hugh-Jones mocked it with the deliberately anachronistic "If I built it in, is author ID Bacon?", attributing this to a derisive William Shakespeare; and counter-"proved" that Shakespeare wrote Bacon by converting the latter's famous opening phrase "What is truth, said jesting Pilate..." into "Truth? A lasting jape. Hide it. WS".

Other uses

Long before ''Love's Labour's Lost'', the word and its variants had been used by medieval and then Renaissance authors.

Medieval

The unusually long word had apparently already been in circulation among scholars by the time of Petrus Grammaticus, 8th-century Italian poet, deacon, grammarian, and Charlemagne's primary Latin teacher. It can be found in Codex Bernensis 522 (Burgerbibliothek of Berne, Cod. 522), an early-9th-century manuscript copy of his work.

Italian lexicographer Papias used it circa 1055.Hamer, 1971, p. 484

''Honorificabilitudo'' appears in a charter of 1187 by Ugone della Volta, second Archbishop of Genoa.du Cange
Honorificabilitudo
"Honorificabilitudo, pro Dignitas, in Charta Hugonis Archiep. Genuensis ann. 1187. apud Ughellum".

Various forms of the word were also discussed in ''Magnae Derivationes'', an early etymological treatise of circa 1190 by Uguccione, Italian canon lawyer and Bishop of Ferrara:

It also appears in ''Ars poetica'', treatise on rhetoric of circa 1208–1216 by English-born French scholar Gervase of Melkley:

Italian grammarian Johannes Balbus used the word in its complete form in his hugely popular 1286 Latin dictionary known as '' Catholicon'' (in 1460, it became one of the first books to be printed using Gutenberg's press). Quoting Uguccione, it says regarding ''honorifico'':

A late-13th-century example can be found in an anonymous sermon in a manuscript in Bodleian Library (MS Bodl. 36, f. 131v).

In his linguistic essay ''De vulgari eloquentia'' (''On eloquence in the vernacular'') of circa 1302–1305 Dante, drawing on Uguccione's ''Magnae Derivationes'', cites ''honorificabilitudinitate'' as an example of a word too long for the standard line in verse:

''Honorificabilitudinitas'' occurs in ''De gestis Henrici septimi Cesaris'' (1313–1315), a book by the Italian poet Albertino Mussato which chronicled 1310–1313 Italian expedition of Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor:

It was for this work that in 1315 the commune of Padua crowned Mussato as poet laureate; he was the first man to receive the honour since antiquity.

It is also found on an Exchequer record, in a hand of the reign of Henry VI (1422–1461).Hunter, 1845, p. 264

The word appears in '' Adagia'', an annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled by Dutch humanist Erasmus; he recalls a humorous couplet about a man called Hermes who was fond of using foot-and-a-half words:

First published in 1500, by Shakespeare's time it was a very popular book, widely used as a text-book in English schools. The couplet itself was a popular schoolboy joke, current both in Erasmus's and Shakespeare's times, and beyond.

In the foreword to his 1529 translation of Lucan, French humanist and engraver Geoffroy Tory used the word as an example of bad writing, citing the Hermes couplet.

It also occurs in the works of Rabelais and in ''The Complaynt of Scotland'' (1549).

The word in its various forms was frequently used as test of the pen by scribes. One example is found in a fourteenth-century Pavian codex. It may also be seen, with some additional syllables, scribbled on a page of a late-16th-century heraldic manuscript (British Library, MS Harley 6113). Alternative form ''in honorificabilitudinacionibus'' is attested from manuscripts in Bamberg (Bamberg State Library, Q.V.41) and Munich (Bavarian State Library, Cgm 541).Bertalot, 1917, p. 55, fn. 47–8 Other examples include Erfurt O.23, Prague 211 (f. 255v), Bratislava II Q.64 (f. 27r), Pembroke 260 ( flyleaf), and a manuscript of Hoccleve.

The word is also known from at least two inscriptions on medieval tableware. A small goblet inscribed with ''honorificabilitudinitatibus'' around it was found at Kirby Muxloe Castle in Leicestershire, England. A pewter cruet engraved with an abbreviated version of the word (''honorificabiliut'') next to the owner's name (Thomas Hunte) was unearthed in a well filled in 1476 during 1937 conservation works at Ashby de la Zouch Castle, also in Leicestershire. The cruet was cast around 1400 and is currently in Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Modern

Shakespeare's times

The year after the publication of ''Love's Labours Lost'' it is used by English satirist Thomas Nashe in his 1599 pamphlet ''Nashe's Lenten Stuff'':

Nashe is referring to the exotic medicinal plant Guaiacum

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