What the Hell is a Hapax Legomenon?

Well, I’ll tell you if you’ll join me for a few minutes

In its purest meaning, a hapax legomenon is a word that only appears once in the literature of an entire language. Thus, a hapax, as it is sometimes contracted to, maybe a wholly unknown and unknowable word. This is especially true when we are talking about ancient writings as the most tried and tested method for understanding what something means by looking at its multiple usages in different contexts and how it ties in with other words. Just as with music, relativity is the best tool for identifying notes and words.

The so-close-yet-so-far elusiveness of hapax legomena makes them simultaneously melancholic, mysterious, and really quite beautiful. The concept can, however, be expanded to include the complete corpus of any given writer or any single text. Given this wider application, our elusive friends are actually pretty common.

By the way, the term itself is Ancient Greek and denotes, ‘being said once.’

I think it best to stick to older instances of our friends in order to view them in all their recondite glory. So, let’s jump in and have a little look-see at the lay of the land.

Hapaxia Legomenus

There are 1,300–1,500 hapax legomena in the Old Testament. The only curiosity surrounding 1,100 of these is that is simply ‘said once’. The remaining 400 are either rather difficult to pin down by reference to other words or seem to be wholly unique coinages that only appear once in the entire language of biblical Hebrew.

A most fascinating turn of events is that ‘Lucifer’, which most naturally think of as playing a fairly central role in the Christian battle between good and evil, is actually a hapax in biblical terms, only being mentioned a single time throughout the entirety of the Bible seemingly.

Here is a list of them and you will see that many have been satisfactorily narrowed down, but, for a few, their mysteries remain hitherto unraveled. A most fascinating turn of events is that ‘Lucifer’, which most naturally think of as playing a fairly central role in the Christian battle between good and evil, is actually a hapax in biblical terms, only being mentioned a single time throughout the entirety of the Bible seemingly.

On the opposite side of the world, many of the as-of-yet undeciphered Mayan glyphs are hapaxes.

Generally, the further back in time one goes, the more comparison and interrelation become indispensable. This is true for words within a known language, as we will see below. The necessity of the comparative and the contextual become incalculably greater when historical linguists and archaeologists attempt to decode ancient languages.

The best example of this is the Rosetta Stone on which was inscribed a decree from King Ptolemy V Epiphanes in Ancient Egyptian (in both Demotic and hieroglyphic scripts) and in Ancient Greek. The fact that Ancient Greek was known provided the necessary element for scholars to be able to decode the language of the pharaohs.

A second example is the ancient civilization of Harappa discovered in the Punjab region of India. Harappa had its heyday around 2000 BCE and was astonishingly sophisticated in many ways. Approximately 4,000 seals have been found with the Harappan language engraved upon them. Yet, the language remains undeciphered for the reason that there is absolutely nothing to compare the seals with that could give researchers a firm foothold in order to begin the process.

Let’s move a bit closer to our time and take a look at a few examples of hapax legomena in the work of some famous writers and a few true hapaxes which appear but a single time throughout the entire reaches of a given language.

The works of Shakespeare contain thousands of hapaxes, putatively somewhere in the region of 6,500. Most of these are simply only mentioned once across the Shakespearian canon but do exist outside of it.

It means something close to ‘honourableness’ and was in use quite a number of centuries before Shakespeare decided to dust it off and give it a resurgence, with Joyce and Dickens only too happy to spread the good word centuries later.

Probably the most titillating of these stands as one of the longest non-technical words in the English language: Honorificabilitudinitatibus. This word is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and will have your tongue ricocheting about the pommel horse of your mouth. It means something close to ‘honourableness’ and was in use quite a number of centuries before Shakespeare decided to dust it off and give it a resurgence, with Joyce and Dickens only too happy to spread the good word centuries later.

Another word seems to not only be a legomenon within the bounds of the Shakespearian cluster but indeed throughout the English language nebula. This word is ‘hebenon’, and it is the poison that is responsible for killing Hamlet’s father. Its identity remains unclear. Some postulate that it may be another word for hemlock, yet Shakespeare specifically refers to hemlock on a number of occasions. Others posit that hebenon may be henbane. Regardless of what the word may or may not signify, the word itself is uttered just once across the breadth of the English language, thus making it a true hapax legomenon.

Not to be outdone by Shakespeare, Dante was on to his game 300 years earlier with his word, ‘ramogna’. This gem is a true legomenonian (there’s one from yours truly perhaps) and makes its presence known but a single time across the totality of Italian literature. Its meaning is unknown, according to my research.

In the Irish language, ‘chomneibi’ pops up just once before popping off forever. It is an adjective which describes a lath (a panel of wood), however, what it imputes to said panel of wood is not known and likely to remain unknown.

Another word, ‘flother’, is a devout adherent of legomenonianism (there’s another) in that it only rears its mirthful noggin one time throughout English literature, circa 1250 supposedly. Unlike hebenon and ramogna, however, flother has been forced to give up its secrets and is another word for a snowflake.

In the Irish language, ‘chomneibi’ pops up just once before popping off forever. It is an adjective that describes a lath (a panel of wood), however, what it imputes to said panel of wood is not known and is likely to remain unknown.

In Russian, the word ‘вытол’ (vytol) appears on a birch bark manuscript from Novgorod which was created sometime between 1220–1240. Based on the context, ‘вытол был пойман’ (they caught vytol/the vytol or vytol/the vytol was caught), scholars have conjectured that it’s either a name or some kind of title.

And there we are. That’s my brief sojourn in the mystical and mysterious land of Legomenonia (or should that be Legomenopolis? Either way, more hapaxes potentially).

And remember, if our wonderfully esoteric friends aren’t magical enough for you in and of themselves, they’re sure to give you an exquisitely delumptious (to quote Mr Roald Dahl) head start in a game of googlewhacks at the very least.