Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Honorificabilitudinitatibus (honōrificābilitūdinitātibus, Latin pronunciation: [hɔnoːrɪfɪkaːbɪlɪtuːdɪnɪˈtaːtɪbʊs]) 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 27 letters, it is the longest word in the English language which strictly alternates consonants and vowels.[1]
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:
O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words, I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier swallowed than a
flap-dragon.
Use in Baconianism
The word has been used by adherents of the
It is far from the only possible anagram. In 1898,
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.[10][11]
Italian lexicographer Papias used it circa 1055.[12]
Honorificabilitudo appears in a charter of 1187 by
Various forms of the word were also discussed in Magnae Derivationes, an early
Ab honorifico, hic et hec honorificabilis, -le, et hec honorificabilitas, -tis et hec honorificabilitudinitas, et est longissima dictio, que illo versu continetur: Fulget honorificabilitudinitatibus iste.[16][b]
It also appears in Ars poetica, treatise on rhetoric of circa 1208–1216 by English-born French scholar Gervase of Melkley:
Quidam, admirantes huiusmodi magna dictiones, inutiliter et turpissime versum clauserunt sub duobus dictionibus vel tribus. Unde quidam ait: Versificabantur Constantinopolitani; alius: Plenus honorificabilitudinitatibus esto.[17]
Italian grammarian
Quoting Uguccione, it says regarding honorifico:Unde haec honorificabilitudinitatibus et haec est longissimo dictu ut patet in hoc versu, Fulget honorificabilitudinitatibus iste.[19]
A late-13th-century example can be found in an anonymous sermon in a manuscript in Bodleian Library (MS Bodl. 36, f. 131v).[20]
In his linguistic essay
Posset adhuc inveniri plurium sillabarum vocabulum sive verbum, sed quia capacitatem omnium nostrorum carminum superexcedit, rationi presenti non videtur obnoxium, sicut est illud honorificabilitudinitate, quod duodena perficitur sillaba in vulgari et in gramatica tredena perficitur in duobus obliquis.[22][23]
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:
Nam et maturius cum Rex prima Italiæ ostia contigisset, legatos illo Dux ipse direxerat cum regalibus exeniis Honorificabilitudinitatis nec obsequentiæ ullius causa, quibus etiam inhibitum pedes osculari regios.[24]
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.[25]
It is also found on an Exchequer record, in a hand of the reign of Henry VI (1422–1461).[26]
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:[27]
Hamaxiaea: Extat jocus cujusdam in Hermetem quempiam hujuscemodi sesquipedalium verborum affectatorem:
Gaudet honorificabilitudinitatibus Hermes
Consuetudinibus, sollicitudinibus.[28]
First published in 1500, by Shakespeare's time it was a very popular book, widely used as a text-book in English schools.[29][30] The couplet itself was a popular schoolboy joke, current both in Erasmus's and Shakespeare's times, and beyond.[31]
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.[32][33]
It also occurs in the works of
The word in its various forms was frequently used as test of the pen by scribes. One example is found in a fourteenth-century
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.[41][42] 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.[43][44][45][46]
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:
Physicians deafen our ears with the honorificabilitudinitatibus of their heavenly panacaea, their sovereign guiacum.[47]
Nashe is referring to the exotic medicinal plant Guaiacum, the name of which was also exotic to the English at that time, being the first Native American word imported into the English language.[48]
The word also appears in
For grief's sake keep him out; his discourse is like the long word Honorificabilitudinitatibus, a great deal of sound and no sense.[49]
In John Fletcher's tragicomedy The Mad Lover of c. 1617 the word is used by the palace fool:
The Iron age return'd to Erebus,
And Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Thrust out o'th' Kingdom by the head and shoulders.[50]
John Taylor ("The Water Poet") uses an even longer version of the word, honorificicabilitudinitatibus in the very first sentence of his 1622[51] pamphlet Sir Gregory Nonsence:
Most Honorificicabilitudinitatibus, I having studied the seven Lub berly sciences (being nine by computation) out of which I gathered three conjunctions four muile Ass-under, which with much labour, and great ease, to little or no purpose, I have noddicated to your gray, grave, and gravelled Prate ection?.[52]
After Shakespeare
Following the tradition of medieval scholars, Charles du Cange included both honorificabilitudo and honorificabilitudinitatibus in his 1678 Latin lexicon Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis, quoting Ugone della Volta and Albertino Mussato.[13][24]
While honorificabilitudinitatibus was not included in Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary,[60] Dr Johnson did comment on its length in his 1765 edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare:
This word, whencesoever it comes, is often mentioned as the longest word known.[61]
Commenting on this, antiquarian Joseph Hunter wrote in 1845:
This Dr. Johnson calls a word, and says that "it is the longest word known." This is a very extraordinary hallucination of a mind so accustomed to definition as his was, and so apt to form definitions eminently just and proper. Word, when properly understood, belongs only to a combination of letters that is significative; but this is a mere arbitrary and unmeaning combination of syllables, and devised merely to serve as an exercise in penmanship, a schoolmaster's copy for persons learning to write.[26]
In 1858, Charles Dickens wrote an essay Calling Bad Names for the weekly magazine Household Words he edited at the time; it starts with the Love's Labour's Lost quote and uses it to satirize the scientific publications that use too many Latin words:
He who by the seashore makes friends with the sea-nettles, is introduced to them by the scientific master of ceremonies as the Physsophoridae and Hippopodydae. Creatures weak, delicate and beautiful, are Desmidiaceae, Chaetopterina, and Amphinomaceae, Tenthredineta, Twentysyllableorfeeta, and all for the honour of science; or rather, not for its honour; but for it honorificabilitudinitatibus.[62]
Like John o'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country.[63][64]
In 1993 U.S. News & World Report used the word in its original meaning with reference to a debate about new words' being used in the game of Scrabble:
Honorificabilitudinity and the requirements of Scrabble fans dictated that the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary's makers be open-minded enough to include dweeb (a boringly conventional person), droob (an unprepossessing or contemptible person, esp. a man), and droog (a member of a gang: a young ruffian).[65][c]
In the American animated television series Pinky and the Brain's 1995 episode "Napoleon Brainaparte", the word is defined as "with honorablenesses".[66]
Jeff Noon's 2001 book of experimental poetry, Cobralingus, used the fictional Cobralingus Engine to remix this word in the style of electronic music to create a prose poem entitled "Pornostatic Processor".[67]
In the 2005 episode "Sick Days & Spelling" of the Nickelodeon TV show Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Ned Bigby enters the spelling bee, having easy words until he comes across the word "honorificabilitudinitatibus" and gives up.
In Suzanne Selfors' 2011
See also
- Antidisestablishmentarianism
- Floccinaucinihilipilification
- Longest word in English
- Longest words
- Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
- Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Explanatory notes
- ^ The two "u"s, rendered as "v"s in the original literation, are put together to form—literally—"a double u" (w), as was common practice in Shakespeare's day.[7][8]
- ^ Although Uguccione's book survives in multiple manuscripts, it has never been printed—as discussed in Toynbee, 1902, p. 98 (text and fn. 3), p. 99 (fn. 5), p. 101 (fn. 6), or, more recently, in Sharpe, 1996, p. 103.
- ^ Note that the word itself actually contains more letters than what the Scrabble board can accommodate.
Citations
- ISBN 978-1-83895-723-0
- ^ K. K. Ruthven, Faking Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p.102
- ^ Samuel Schoenbaum, Shakespeare's Lives, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed.1991 p.421
- ^ Toynbee, 1902, p. 113, fn. 1
- ISBN 9780521141390.
- ^ Sladek 1974, p. 290.
- ^ Basch 2007.
- ^ Leslie & Griffin 2003.
- ^ Stephen Hugh-Jones, "Fantasy as Fact", The Telegraph, 6 June 2012
- ^ Simms, p.179
- ^ Burgerbibliothek Bern Cod. 522 Sammelbd.: Petrus grammaticus: Ars; Aelius Donatus: Ars grammatica; Kommentare zu Donat
- ^ a b c Hamer, 1971, p. 484
- ^ a b du Cange, Honorificabilitudo: "Honorificabilitudo, pro Dignitas, in Charta Hugonis Archiep. Genuensis ann. 1187. apud Ughellum".
- ^ Giovanni Battista Semeria (1843). Secoli cristiani della Liguria, ossia, Storia della metropolitana di Genova. pp. 61–66.
- ^ Sharpe, 1996, p. 103
- ^ Cited in Toynbee, 1902, p. 113
- ^ Nencioni 1967, pp. 92–93
- ^ Venzke, 2000
- ^ Simms, pp. 179–180
- ^ Madan and Craster, 1922, pp. 99–100
- ^ Toynbee, 1902, p.113
- ^ "Dante: De Vulgari Eloquentia II.VII". 2010-08-04. Retrieved 2010-08-23.
- ^ Bobinski, 1896, p.451
- ^ a b du Cange, Honorificabilitudinitas cites the source as "Albertus Mussatus de Gestis Henrici VII. lib. 3. rubr. 8. apud Murator. tom. 10. col. 376"
- ISBN 9780391042025.
- ^ a b c Hunter, 1845, p. 264
- ^ Mynors 1982, p.251
- (1508). Adagia, 2169, III.II.69
- ^ Hutton, p. 393
- ^ Watson, Foster (1908). The English grammar schools to 1660: their curriculum and practice. Cambridge University Press. pp. 28, 425. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
- ^ Mynors 1982, p. 401, fn. 4
- ^ Tory, 1529
- ^ Ivans, 1920, pp. 85–86
- ^ Hutton, 1931, pp. 393–395
- ^ Nencioni 1967, p. 93
- ^ Bobinski, 1897, p.
- ^ Traube, 1909, pp. 95–96, fn. 7
- ^ a b Bertalot, 1917, p. 55, fn. 47–8
- ^ James, 1905, pp. 237–238
- ^ Küsswetter, 1906, p. 23 cites a facsimile by the Early English Text Society.
- ^ Butt, Stephen. "Honorificabilitudinitatibus - John Woodford (1358-1401)". The Woodforde Family: A History of the Woodforde Family from 1300. Archived from the original on 2 February 2014. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
- ISBN 9781405840866.
- ^ "Cruet, cast pewter, England, about 1400, museum number: M.26–1939". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
- ^ "Cruet". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 19 January 2014.
- ^ Weinstein 2011, p. 130
- ^ Simms, 1938, pp. 178-179 text + pl. L
- ^ Thomas Nashe (1599). Nashe's Lenten Stuff. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
- ISBN 978-0-521-77747-6.
- John Marston (1605). The Dutch Courtesan. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
- ^ Weber 1812, p. 156
- ^ Di Biase 2006, p. 277
- ^ Hindley 1872, p. 266
- ^ Ballentine, 2010, p. 77
- ^ Blount, 1656
- ^ Notes and Queries, 1881, p. 418, reply by Xit
- ^ Notes and Queries, 1881, p. 418, reply by F. C. Birkbeck Terry
- ^ Coles, 1676
- ^ Notes and Queries, 1881, p. 29, query by James Hooper
- ^ Bailey, 1721
- ^ Johnson, 1755, p. 970: honorary is followed by honour.
- ^ Johnson and Steevens, 1765, p. 305
- ^ Dickens 1858, p. 333
- ^ Joyce, 1922
- ^ Royle, 2010, pp. 66–67, including a discussion of the multiple allusions to Shakespeare's life and works in the quotation.
- ^ Jennifer Fisher; "Droobs and Dweebs"; U.S. News & World Report (Washington, D.C.); Oct 11, 1993.
- ^ pattycakes. "Pinky and The Brain Episode Guide". Retrieved 20 January 2014.
- ^ Jeff Noon; Cobralingus. 2001. Hove UK. Codex Books.
- ^ Suzanne Selfors, "Smells Like Treasure," ch. 35, New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2011.
General and cited references
- Nathan Bailey (1721). An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. 1726 edition.
- Brian C. Ballentine (2010). How to Do Things with Hard Words: The Uses of Classical Borrowings in the English Renaissance. Doctoral thesis, Brown University.
- Basch, David (2007). "Shakespearean Prayer". The Jewish Magazine.
- Ludwig Bertalot (1917). De Vulgari Eloquentia, Libri II. Frankfurt a.M., Friedrichsdorf.
- Thomas Blount (1656). Glossographia. 1972 facsimile edition.
- Karl Borinski (1896). "Dante und Shakespeare". Anglia (18): 450–454.
- Karl Borinski (1897). "Noch Einmal von Honorificabilitudinitatibus". Anglia (19): 135–136.
- Elisha Coles (1676). An English Dictionary: Explaining the Difficult Terms that are used in Divinity, Husbandry, Physick, Phylosophy, Law, Navigation, Mathematicks, and Other Arts and Sciences. 1973 facsimile edition.
- Carmine Di Biase (2006). Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period. Amsterdam: ISBN 9789042017689.
- Charles Dickens (1858). "Calling Bad Names", in Household Words, volume 18.
- Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange (1678). Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis. 1883–1887 edition (searchable version).
- Douglas Hamer (1971). "Review of: Shakespeare's Lives. By S. Schoenbaum". .
- Charles Hindley (1872). Works of John Taylor, the Water-poet. London: Reeves and Turner.
- Joseph Hunter (1845). New illustrations of the life, studies, and writings of Shakespeare.
- James Hutton (1931). "Honorificabilitudinitatibus". JSTOR 2913094.
- William M. Ivans Jr. (1920). "Geoffroy Tory". The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 15 (4): 79–86. JSTOR 3253359.
- Montague Rhodes James (1905). A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
- Samuel Johnson (1755). A Dictionary of the English Language. 1785 edition.
- Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1765). The Plays of William Shakespeare. 1801 edition.
- James Joyce (1922). Ulysses. online.
- Hans Küsswetter (1906). Beiträge zur Shakespeare-Bacon-Frage. Borna, Leipzig, Buchdruckerei R. Noske.
- Leslie, Deborah J.; Griffin, Benjamin (2003). Transcription of Early Letter Forms in Rare Materials Cataloging (PDF). DCRM Conference, 10-13 March 2003. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 20, 2011.
- Falconer Madan, Edmund Craster (1922). A summary catalogue of Western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Volume II, part 1.
- ISBN 9780802028310.
- Giovanni Nencioni(it) (1967). "Dante e la Retorica", in Dante e Bologna nei tempi di Dante.
- Notes and Queries (1881). Series 6, volume IV.
- Nicholas Royle (2010). "The distraction of 'Freud': Literature, Psychoanalysis and the Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy", in Shakespeare and His Authors: Critical Perspectives on the Authorship Question.
- ISBN 9780813208428.
- R. S. Simms (1938). "Pewter Vessel from Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle". The Antiquaries Journal. 18 (2): 178–180. S2CID 163890123.
- ISBN 9780812817126.
- Geoffroy Tory (1529). La Table de l'ancien philosophe Cebes. Scans online at Bavarian State Library.
- Paget Toynbee (1902). Dante studies and researches. London: Methuen.
- Ludwig Traube (1909). Vorlesungen und abhandlungen. München, Beck.
- Alfred Horatio Upham (1908). The French Influence in English Literature from the Accession of Elizabeth to the Restoration. New York City: Columbia University Press.
- ISBN 978-3492229210.
- Henry William Weber (1812). The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, volume 4.
- Rosemary Weinstein (2011). The Archaeology of Pewter Vessels in England 1200-1700: A Study of Form and Usage. Doctoral thesis, Durham University.
External links
- Media related to Honorificabilitudinitatibus at Wikimedia Commons
- Quotations related to Honorificabilitudinitatibus at Wikiquote
- The dictionary definition of honorificabilitudinitatibus at Wiktionary