Honorificabilitudinitatibus
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".
[4][5] 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.
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.
[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.
[17]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).
[20] In his linguistic essay De vulgari eloquentia (On eloquence in the vernacular) of circa 1302–1305 Dante, drawing on Uguccione's Magnae Derivationes,[21] cites honorificabilitudinitate as an example of a word too long for the standard line in verse: 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.
[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 HermesConsuetudinibus, sollicitudinibus.
[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.
[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.
[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 HonorificabilitudinitatibusThrust out o'th' Kingdom by the head and shoulders.
[52]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.
[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.
[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.
