Okay, so there's this word, honorificabilitudinitatibus. It's a Latin word and it roughly translates to "the state of being able to receive honors." It's one of the longest words in the English language, and is the longest word to have appeared in one of Shakespeare's plays. However, because it's such an unusual word, even for Shakespeare, a lot of people have taken it to be a clue that Willam Shakespeare was not in fact the real author of his famous plays. People assume that it's some kind of anagram.
In 1905, Isaac Hull Platt, a famous Baconian, anagrammed it to "hi ludi, F. Baconis nati, tuiti orbi," which is Latin for "these plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world," to suggest that Sir Francis Bacon was the original author. This is a popular fan theory and one of the more common assertions from people who question the authorship of Shakespeare's works.
However, there are other proposed authors for Shakespeare's plays. In the 1970s, a man named John Sladek pointed out that the word could also be an anagram for "I, B. Ionsonii, uurit a lift'd batch," with "uurit" being a corruption of "writ." Sladek's theory is that one Ben Johnson might have been the true author.
Earlier than both of these theories, however, is an 1898 suggestion by one Paget Toynbee, who suggested that the word may in fact be a tribute to Dante, as it is also an anagram of "ubi Italicus ibi Danti honor fit," which is Latin for "where there is an Italian, there honour is paid to Dante."
Then, in the long-lost distant past of 2012, one Steven Hugh-Jones, sick and tired of everyone else's shitty theories, published a column in the Calcutta Telegraph sarcastically suggesting that William Shakespeare had in fact intended the word to demonstrate that Sir Francis Bacon had not written the play, because it is of course an anagram of "if I built it in, is author ID Bacon?"
But Steven Hugh-Jones wasn't done. Returning to Sir Francis Bacon's own works, of which there were many, he took the famous opening phrase "What is truth, said jesting Pilate..." and "proved" that in fact it was Shakespeare who wrote Bacon's work. For you see, "What is truth, said jesting Pilate" in an anagram of "Truth? A lasting jape. Hide it. WS." Checkmate, Baconian theory.
I think this controversy alone might make honorificabilitudinitatibus my new favorite word. I want to have it tattooed along the length of my forearm. I don't really have anything else profound to add, other than that the history of the English language is curious and awesome.
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It's my first time ever hearing this word. I enjoyed your article. Interesting!
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