Shakespeare's Hapax Legomenon

Here’s a first: I have encountered a word with quite a history, but it is not found in Webster’s New World Dictionary, etymonline.com, or dictionary.com.

The word is honorificabilitudinitatibus, and Michael Quinlin, on his website worldwidewords.com, tells us it is used by Shakespeare (in Love’s Labor Lost), and by James Joyce (in Ulysses), and the man known as the Water Poet, John Taylor (a Thames waterman). The webpage http://www.bartleby.com/81/10490.html says that the word frequently appears in old plays and refers us to Bailey’s Dictionary.

Shakespeare’s use of the word in Love’s Labor Lost is found in Act 5, Scene 1, where the character Costard, the clown, says ” for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus.”

Where did he get this word? There is a Latin word honorificabilitudinitas that is formed from the Latin word honor, and it lacks only an ibu near the end to be the same word. According to www.shakespeareonline.com/biography/shakespearetopquestions.html “the word honorificabilitudinitatibus is the dative singular conjugation of a medieval Latin word.” It also says that “Dante actually used it more than once, as did other writers of the period. A translation of it would be ‘the state of being able to achieve honors.’" Other sources (including Wikipedia) say the Latin is the ablative plural. Where’s a Latin scholar when you need one?

The word has become the center of numerous suspicions and theories, including a unique one I found at http://www.sirbacon.org/gallery/karl.html that gets into numerology as well. The most common is that the word is an anagram for Hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi which, in English, can be translated as: “These plays, F. Bacon’s offspring, are preserved for the world.” It is a conspiracy theorist’s “proof” that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

Michael Quinion weighs in on the famous interpretation of honorificabilitudinitatibus by saying that. “This little gem of misapplied cryptography was presented by Sir Edwin Lawrence-Durning in 1910 in his book Bacon is Shakespeare as a hidden message left by Francis Bacon, who (as some are convinced) actually wrote the plays usually said to be by Shakespeare. This is all nonsense, of course — as every schoolboy knows, they were really written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. But the same set of letters, tested in the common tongue, makes up Inhibit in fabulous, idiotic art, Inhabit furious libido in attic, Habitual if ionic distribution, and Hi! fabulous tit in idiotic brain. What would Sir Edwin have made of all these?” (A copy of part of Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence’s – as the website lists his name – treatise can be found at http://www.wattpad.com/13241.)

The website wordsmith.com also discounts the Francis Bacon anagram idea, saying “Of course, that doesn't prove anything -- the word had been used by other writers earlier. And if you torture words enough, they confess to anything.” (The site also refers you to wordsmith.org which has an anagram server that will allow you to input anything and find anagrams from it; Larry Hostetler is an anagram for hearty stroller or try stellar hero.)