Honorificabilitudinitatibus

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File:Love's Labour's Lost - first quarto (1598) - page 47 - honorificabilitudinitatibus.jpg
The word as it appears in the first surviving edition of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost (third line)

Honorificabilitudinitatibus (honōrificābilitūdinitātibus, Template:IPA) is the dative and ablative plural of the medieval Latin word Template:Lang, which can be translated as "the state of being able to achieve honours". It is mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene II 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 Template:Str len letters, it is the longest word in the English language to strictly alternate between consonants and vowels.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>

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: Template:Quote

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.<ref>K. K. Ruthven, Faking Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p.102</ref> 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".<ref>Samuel Schoenbaum, Shakespeare's Lives, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed.1991 p.421</ref>

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).<ref>Toynbee, 1902, p. 113, fn. 1</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn 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".<ref>Stephen Hugh-Jones, "Fantasy as Fact", The Telegraph, 6 June 2012</ref>

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.<ref>Simms, p.179</ref><ref>Burgerbibliothek Bern Cod. 522 Sammelbd.: Petrus grammaticus: Ars; Aelius Donatus: Ars grammatica; Kommentare zu Donat</ref>

Italian lexicographer Papias used it circa 1055.<ref name=Hamer1971>Hamer, 1971, p. 484</ref>

Honorificabilitudo appears in a charter of 1187 by Ugone della Volta, second Archbishop of Genoa.<ref name="duCange1">du Cange, Honorificabilitudo: "Honorificabilitudo, pro Dignitas, in Charta Hugonis Archiep. Genuensis ann. 1187. apud Ughellum".</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Various forms of the word were also discussed in Magnae Derivationes, an early etymological treatise of circa 1190<ref>Sharpe, 1996, p. 103</ref> by Uguccione, Italian canon lawyer and Bishop of Ferrara: Template:Quote

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

File:Johannes Balbus - Catholicon - 1460 Gutenberg edition - honorificabilitudinitatibus.jpg
Johannes Balbus, 1286, Catholicon (printed edition of 1460 by Johannes Gutenberg)

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).<ref name=Hamer1971/><ref>Venzke, 2000</ref> Quoting Uguccione, it says regarding honorifico: Template:Quote

A late-13th-century example can be found in an anonymous sermon in a manuscript in Bodleian Library (MS Bodl. 36, f. 131v).<ref>Madan and Craster, 1922, pp. 99–100</ref>

In his linguistic essay De vulgari eloquentia (On eloquence in the vernacular) of circa 1302–1305 Dante, drawing on Uguccione's Magnae Derivationes,<ref>Toynbee, 1902, p.113</ref> cites honorificabilitudinitate as an example of a word too long for the standard line in verse: Template:Quote

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: Template:Quote 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

It is also found on an Exchequer record, in a hand of the reign of Henry VI (1422–1461).<ref name="hunter">Hunter, 1845, p. 264</ref>

File:Erasmus - 1508 - Adagia - honorificabilitudinitatibus.jpg
An entry in Desiderius Erasmus's compendium Adagia, a possible source for Shakespeare

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:<ref>Mynors 1982, p.251</ref> Template:Quote First published in 1500, by Shakespeare's time it was a very popular book, widely used as a text-book in English schools.<ref>Hutton, p. 393</ref><ref name=Watson1908>Template:Cite book</ref> The couplet itself was a popular schoolboy joke, current both in Erasmus's and Shakespeare's times, and beyond.<ref>Mynors 1982, p. 401, fn. 4</ref>

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.<ref>Tory, 1529</ref><ref>Ivans, 1920, pp. 85–86</ref>

It also occurs in the works of Rabelais<ref name=Hamer1971/> and in The Complaynt of Scotland (1549).<ref>Hutton, 1931, pp. 393–395</ref>

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.<ref>Nencioni 1967, p. 93</ref> 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).<ref name="hunter"/><ref>Bobinski, 1897, p.</ref> Alternative form in honorificabilitudinacionibus is attested from manuscripts in Bamberg (Bamberg State Library, Q.V.41) and Munich (Bavarian State Library, Cgm 541).<ref>Traube, 1909, pp. 95–96, fn. 7</ref><ref name="Bertalot1917">Bertalot, 1917, p. 55, fn. 47–8</ref> Other examples include Erfurt O.23, Prague 211 (f. 255v), Bratislava II Q.64 (f. 27r),<ref name="Bertalot1917"/> Pembroke 260 (flyleaf),<ref>James, 1905, pp. 237–238</ref> and a manuscript of Hoccleve.<ref>Küsswetter, 1906, p. 23 cites a facsimile by the Early English Text Society.</ref>

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.<ref name=woodforde>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=truth>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name=cruet>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=cruet2>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Weinstein 2011, p. 130</ref><ref>Simms, 1938, pp. 178-179 text + pl. L</ref>

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: Template:Quote 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The word also appears in John Marston's 1605 play The Dutch Courtesan, Act V, Scene II: Template:Quote

In John Fletcher's tragicomedy The Mad Lover of Template:Circa 1617 the word is used by the palace fool Template:QuoteTemplate:Quote

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.<ref name="duCange1"/><ref name="duCange2"/>

Thomas Blount listed the anglicized form of the word, honorificabilitudinity (defined as "honorableness"), among the 11,000 hard or unusual words in his 1656 Glossographia, the largest English dictionary at the time.<ref>Ballentine, 2010, p. 77</ref><ref>Blount, 1656</ref><ref>Notes and Queries, 1881, p. 418, reply by Xit</ref> The entry was quoted by Elisha Coles in An English Dictionary, published in 1676.<ref>Notes and Queries, 1881, p. 418, reply by F. C. Birkbeck Terry</ref><ref>Coles, 1676</ref> It was also repeated by Nathan Bailey in his influential 1721 An Universal Etymological English Dictionary.<ref>Notes and Queries, 1881, p. 29, query by James Hooper</ref><ref>Bailey, 1721</ref>

While honorificabilitudinitatibus was not included in Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary,<ref>Johnson, 1755, p. 970: honorary is followed by honour.</ref> Dr Johnson did comment on its length in his 1765 edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare: Template:Quote

Commenting on this, antiquarian Joseph Hunter wrote in 1845: Template:Quote

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: Template:Quote

James Joyce also used this word in his mammoth 1922 novel Ulysses, during the Scylla and Charybdis episode; when Stephen Dedalus articulates his interpretation of Hamlet: Template:Quote

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: Template:Quote

See also

Explanatory notes

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Citations

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General and cited references

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