Friday, October 01, 2010

Honorificabilitudinitatibus!

The title of this post is the longest word in the works of Shakespeare.  He uses it once, in Love's Labour's Lost.  It's a totally legit word, with other attestations, meaning something like "the state of being able to achieve honors".  Personally, I like to think that ol' Billy put it in on a dare.  He and some of his fellow roustabouts were in their cups and one of them slurs "Well, if your such a friggin' genius, howzabout working honorificabilitudinitatibus into the next scene you write!"

The other day I was checking out the wikipedia page on honorificabilitudinitatibus.  Of course it has one.  Shakespeare's favorite brand of toilet paper probably has its own page.  What I discovered there was that some of the folks who think Ben Jonson wrote the plays cite the word as evidence for their position.  They see it as an anagram for I, B. Ionsonii, uurit [writ] a lift'd batch. That looks like a helluva stretch to me. What the hell is a lift'd batch?

But it got me wondering what other anagrams one can build out of these 27 letters.  Enter the Internet Anagram Server.  Turns out you can build over 37,000 phrases.  I only looked at the first thousand, 998 of which start with "A Ranbbinic".  Here's the first forty six, including the two non-rabbinic ones.


A Rabbinic Fluid Hoist I Tuition
A Rabbinic Hid Foil Tuition Suit
A Rabbinic Hid Folio Intuit Suit
A Rabbinic Hindi Outfit Oil Suit
A Rabbinic Id If Loutish Tuition
A Rabbinic Dilutions If Outhit I
A Rabbinic Dilutions Outfit Hi I
A Rabbinic Dilution If Outhits I
A Rabbinic Dilution If Outhit Is
A Rabbinic Dilution Outfits Hi I
A Rabbinic Dilution Outfit Hi Is
A Rabbinic Dilution Outfit His I
A Rabbinic Dilution Ifs Outhit I
A Rabbinic Solidi If Outhit Unit
A Rabbinic Solidi If Thou Intuit
A Rabbinic Solidi If Hut Tuition
A Rabbinic Solidi Unfit Outhit I
A Rabbinic Solidi Outfit Hi Unit
A Rabbinic Solidi Fit Uh Tuition
A Rabbinic Solidi Tofu Hi Intuit
A Rabbinic Idiots Foil Uh Intuit
A Rabbinic Idiots Foul Hi Intuit
A Rabbinic Idiots Flu Hi Tuition
A Rabbinic Idiot Finish Oil Tutu
A Rabbinic Idiot Flush I Tuition
A Rabbinic Idiot If Loutish Unit
A Rabbinic Idiot If Lush Tuition
A Rabbinic Idiot Tinfoil Uh Suit
A Rabbinic Idiot Sinful Outhit I
A Rabbinic Idiot Foil Uh Intuits
A Rabbinic Idiot Foils Uh Intuit
A Rabbinic Idiot Unfit Loutish I
A Rabbinic Idiot Fouls Hi Intuit
A Rabbinic Idiot Foul Hi Intuits
A Rabbinic Idiot Foul His Intuit
A Rabbinic Idiot Flus Hi Tuition
A Rabbinic Idiot Flu Hi Tuitions
A Rabbinic Idiot Flu His Tuition
A Rabbinic Odious Filth I Intuit
A Rabbinic Odious If Hilt Intuit
A Rabbinic Odious Lift Hi Intuit
A Rabbinic Odious Flit Hi Intuit
A Rabbinic Studio Foil Hi Intuit
A Rabbinic Duo Outfit Nihilist I
A Bicarb Fluid Hoist I Intuition
A Subbranch Idiot If I Intuit Oil

4 comments:

  1. In those days it was toilet parchment.

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  2. "A Rabbinic Odious Filth I Intuit"

    Proving that Shakespeare's plays were written by David Duke.

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  3. Merchant of Venice ... Heyo!

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  4. Anonymous5:38 AM

    Dude... That fanzy Latin is nothing compared to German. You should definitely read our laws, like the
    Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz, which controls the proper delegation of duties for marking cattle, or the Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung.
    In everyday life, of course, we use shorter words, like Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften. For your very own helicopter, you should order Hubschraubpropellermaschinenflugzeuglandeplatzfähnchenstangenhalterungsschräubchen if you want to play safe.
    And the best thing is, unlike long English words, the most awful German words aren't even borrowed from another language, but mostly indigenous.

    Now, come up with crazy anagrams for that shit! :D

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