Latin Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, teachers, and students wanting to discuss the finer points of the Latin language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Today I was reading 1 Samuel 5 in the Vulgata and in verse 9 these two words are found:
... circumducentibus ... computrescebant ...
which surprised me for their length (16 and 15 letters respectively). So, which are the longest, attested words in Latin? Is Honorificabilitudinitatibus the longest? (27 letters...horrible word, btw) Which are other examples of very long (say, +25 letters) words?
Your word, honorificabilitudinitatibus, seems to be commonly regarded as the longest, and it has the distinction of being used by Shakespeare.
However, there's also this one with 28 letters:
floccinaucinihilipilificatio,
which is the action or habit of estimating something as worthless.
Although the latter is longer by one letter, it was coined by students at Eton College as a humorous word. It can be broken down as follows:
floccus (“a wisp”) + naucum (“a trifle”) + nihilum (“nothing”) + pilus (“a hair”) + ficatio
Given that floccinaucinihilipilificatio is of late coinage, I believe that honorificabilitudinitatibus is most likely the winner. Besides being used by Shakespeare, it wasn't coined by him. Rather, it appeared long before his day, such as in the following dictionary entry by Johannes Balbus in 1286:
Even longer than honorificabilitudinitas and attested in antiquity is subductisupercilicarptor (24 letters). If you want to compare it to a dative/ablative plural, then in fairness the word form you should compare would of course be subductisupercilicarptoribus (28 letters).
It is a word for an overly discerning critic and may perhaps be translated as raised-eyebrow carver (from subducere = raise [actually a rare meaning], supercilium = eyebrow, carptor = food carver).
OK, it's a bit of a joke word that was never in common use. It occurs in one place only, and then it is not really used either, just quoted.
The word was presumably coined by the somewhat mysterious poet Laevius from the second century BC, of whom only scant fragements have survived, but the actual source is Aulus Gellius: Noctes Atticae, book 19, where A. G. reports on the style of Laevius and his proclivity for coining original expressions. For he had attended a reading of Laevius in the house of one Julius Paulus together with his companion Julius Celsinus, and on their way back the two reminisced on the various “Laevian” coinages they had heard, and pondered which of these they might adopt for their own use. After giving a number of examples, Aulus Gellius concludes:
Cetera [verba] enim, quae uidebantur nimium poetica, ex prosae orationis usu alieniora praetermisimus; ueluti fuit, quod de Nestore ait 'trisaeclisenex' et 'dulciorelocus', item quod <de> tumidis magnisque fluctibus '<fluctibus>' inquit 'multigrumis' et flumina gelu concreta 'tegmine' esse 'onychino' dixit et quae multiplica ludens conposuit, quale illud est, quod uituperones suos 'subductisupercilicarptores' appellauit.
Other words namely, that seemed too poetical and inappropriate for use in prose, we passed over; one example was that he called Nestor “trisaeclisenex” and “dulciorelocus,” likewise that for high-rising and great rivers he spoke of “fluctibus multigrumis,” and said that rivers that are frozen solid are “tegmine onychino,” and what multi-part words he playfully put together, such as that he called his critics “subductisupercilicarptores.”
First of all, with all due respect, this word is not Classical Latin; it’s a Medieval Latin neologism (a nonce word) that was occasionally used solely because of its length.
Secondly, honorificabilitudinitatibus is technically a word form, not a word (i.e. it’s not a lexeme).
Afaik, it is first encountered in a treatise written by Peter of Pisa, an eighth century Italian grammarian, who, incidentally, taught Latin to Charlemagne.
Here’s the screenshot:
For what it's worth, the three longest word forms in the Vulgate have 19 letters (http://www.intratext.com/IXT/LAT0001/_FLJ.HTM):
