This week's theme: long words. honorificabilitudinity (on-uh-rif-i-kay-bi-li-tood-ni-tee, -tyood-) noun
Honorableness. [From Medieval Latin honorificabilitudinitas, from Latin honor.] Another form of this, honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters), is the longest word Shakespeare ever used. It comes out of the mouth of Costard, the clown, in Love's Labour's Lost: "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." Note that its spelling alternates consonants and vowels. Some have used an anagram of this word to claim that Francis Bacon was the author of the works attributed to the Bard. Honorificabilitudinitatibus anagrams to the Latin "Hi ludi F. Baconis nati tuiti orbi." which means "These plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world." 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. Have fun with anagrams at http://wordsmith.org/anagram -Anu Garg (gargATwordsmith.org) "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)." Jennifer Fisher; Droobs and Dweebs; U.S. News & World Report (Washington, DC); Oct 11, 1993. Sponsors' messages: Always find the right word with the Visual Thesaurus. Wordsmith readers save 10%. Try it free! http://www.visualthesaurus.com/?code=qt4&ad=aw Perfect your French, German, Spanish or Italian with Champs-Elysees audio magazines on foreign life & culture. http://ads.champs-elysees.com/wsmith3 ............................................................................ The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. -Franklin P. Adams, columnist (1881-1960) Share the magic of words. Send a gift sub: http://wordsmith.org/awad/gift.html Remove, change, or subscribe address: http://wordsmith.org/awad/subscriber.html Pronunciation: http://wordsmith.org/words/honorificabilitudinity.wav http://wordsmith.org/words/honorificabilitudinity.ram Permalink: http://wordsmith.org/words/honorificabilitudinity.html This message was sent to "[email protected]".
