“The iron age returned to Erebus,
And Honorificabilitudinitatibus
Thrust out the kingdom by the head and shoulders.”
Referring to Shakespeare’s appropriation of this ponderous word, which first appeared in a volume entitled “The Complaynt of Scotland,” published at St. Andrew’s in 1548, a commentator says,—
“The splendid procession-word honorificabilitudinitatibus has been pressed into the service of the Baconian theory as containing the cipher initiohi ludi Fr. Bacona, or some other silly trash. The word was no doubt a stock example of the longest Latin word, as the Aristophanic compound ὀρθοφοιτοσυχοφαντοδιχοταλαιπωροι is of the longest Greek word, and was very probably a reminiscence of Shakespeare’s school-days, as the distich
Conturbabantur Constantinopolitani
Innumerabilibus sollicitudinibus
is of our own.”
Trifles
A smart girl in Vassar claims that Phtholognyrrh should be pronounced Turner, and gives this little table to explain her theory: