Honorificabilitudinitatibus

Longest word in Shakespeare's works; longest word in the English language featuring alternating
consonants and vowels.

Honorificabilitudinitatibus is the dative and ablative plural of the medieval Latin word
honorificabilitudinitas, which can be translated as "the state of being able to achieve honours". It is
mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's
Lost.

As it appears only once in Shakespeare's works, it is a hapax legomenon in the Shakespeare canon.
It is also the longest word in the English language featuring only alternating consonants and vowels.

The word is spoken by the comic rustic Costard in Act V, Scene 1 of the play. It is used after an
absurdly pretentious dialogue between the pedantic schoolmaster Holofernes and his friend Sir
Nathaniel. The two pedants converse in a mixture of Latin and florid English. When Moth, a witty
young servant, enters, Costard says of the pedants:

"O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words, 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."

Flap-dragon was a game which involved trying to eat hot raisins from a bowl of burning brandy.