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honorificabilitudinitatibus This word appears famously in "Love's Labour Lost" (see above link) and is referenced by Joyce in "Scylla and Charybdis" -- the episode of Ulysses that is largely a discussion of Shakespeare between Stephen Dedalus and a few acquaintances at the library : STEPHEN: (Stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. 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. What's in a name? Considering it is one appearance shy of being a "hapax legomenon" I'm not surprised it's not in any of my dictionaries. All the same, I would like to know if this fantastical word is etymologically credible, and whether there is even a whit of tenability in the suggestion by the anti-Stratfordians that it is actually the secret, anagramatic signature of Francis Bacon -- Hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi -- the ghost writer of the works of "Shakespeare".
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[ad. med.L. honorificabilitudinitas (Mussatus c1300 in Du Cange), a grandiose extension of honorificabilitudo honourableness (in a charter of 1187, Du Cange), f. honorificabilis honourable. Cf. Complaynt of Scotland (1548-9), Prolog. lf. 14b, Shakes. L.L.L. v. i. 44, and Marston Dutch Courtezan v. (1605) H, where the L. abl. pl. honorificabilitudinitatibus is cited as a typical long word, as honorificabilitudinitate had been previously by Dante De Vulg. Eloq. II. vii.] OED
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I learned about it back in high school from Fowler's, along with floccinaucinihilipilification. I remember reading in a book on the history of lexicography (Landau?) that it was an inhorn term in a medieval, Italian Latin dictionary
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Thanks for the OED definition! The anagram idea is traditionally refuted by producing absurd alternatives. No there's a "game" for the "Wordplay and fun" board! Although I like what Michael Quinion, in the above link, says about the anagram idea--"This is all nonsense, of course—as every schoolboy knows, they [Shakespeare's plays] were really written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford"-- it needs to pointed out that Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and Edward de Vere are simply the noms de plume of the Comte Saint-Germain, better known to the initiated as Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew.
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I once forgot the term for a "word that appears only once in a document or official paper". But I remembered "honorificabilitudinitatibus" was one, so I Googled that word and quickly found "hapax legomenon". Yep, probably the most well-known hapax legomenon there is.
Two of my babylon dictionaries define it as follows:
(from yasin's unique words)
honorificabilitudinitatibus - With honour. We are in the arena of sesquipedalian words - those a foot and a half long, whose prime characteristic is their length rather than their sense or usefulness. Any word used both by James Joyce (in "Ulysses") and by William Shakespeare (in "Love's Labour Lost") can't be entirely dismissed from the canon of English, even though the former borrowed it from the latter, who in turn borrowed it from Latin, and it doesn't seem to have been used by anybody else, ever.
Shakespeare's wondrous creation appears in Act 5, Scene 1: 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.
(Somebody's now sure to ask me about "flap-dragon". It was the name given to a game in which the players snatched raisins out of a dish of burning brandy and extinguished them in their mouths before eating them. By extension, it was the burning raisins used in the game.)"Honorificabilitudinitatibus" is the ablative plural of the Latin honorificabilitudo", honourableness, a long-enough tongue-twister of a word to satisfy most palates by itself. If you're a glutton for punishment, you could also try "honorificabilitudinity", which also means "honourableness".
(from Grandiloquent dictionary)
honorificabilitudinitatibus - With honorableness (a nonsense word from medieval literature)
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Logwood, an aside: who's your avatar? He's great!
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Why I think so too! That be Captain Blondebeard, a local (albeit crazed) pirate chef (with chickens complexity!) from the puzzle-adventure game "Curse of Monkey Island".
"El pollo Diablo!"
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While my nortelrye leaves a lot to be desired, just for the record, is it not the case that as of 1922 (publication date of the Shakespeare & Company edition of Ulysses) "honorificabilitudinitatibus" ceased to be a hapax legomenon?
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A hapax legomenon usually refers to a word that only occurs once in a closed corpus of text: e.g., the Old Testament, Greek or Roman Classical Classical Literature, or specifically the works of a single author, say Homer. My question is did it ever exist in the wild before some guy included it in his dictionary?
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Yes, rather like the unicorn, and as difficult to capture.
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