Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Even though the sound of it
Is something quite atrocious
If you say it loud enough
You'll always sound precocious!!!!!
The longest word in the English languauge. Sadly, the exact origin of the word may never be pinned down, so this will be, for the time being at least, an incomplete report. But it is a fact that the word considerably predates the 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins in which it was prominently featured.
In the West End and Broadway musical, everyone runs out of conversations, and Mary and the children go to Mrs. Corry's shop, where you can buy them. Jane and Michael pick out some letters and spell a few words. Bert and Mrs. Corry use the letters to make up some words (whose existence Jane doubts). Mary says that you could use some letters more than one time and creates the longest word of all in this song.
In the movie the song describes how using the word is a miraculous way to talk one’s self out of difficult situations and even a way to change one’s mood. It occurs in the film’s animated sequence where Mary Poppins is harangued by reporters after winning a horse race and responds to a reporter’s claim that there are not words to describe her feelings of the moment, and her life long dream of being in theater. Mary disagrees with that claim and begins the song about one word which she can use to describe her feelings. Following the successes of the film and musical play, the word has been used as an adjective signifying rather redundant superlatives, such as “the most absolutely stunningly fantastic” of experiences.
The word was never used in the original P. L. Travers books. The common theory is that the word was created by Richard and Robert Sherman for use in the song of the same name in Mary Poppins. This is far from the case. A lawsuit that was filed after the movie came out by Life Music, Inc., against Wonderland Music, the publisher of the Mary Poppins song. It was a copyright infringement suit brought by Barney Young and Gloria Parker, who had written a song in 1949 entitled "Supercalafajaistickespeealadojus" and shown it to Disney in 1951. They asked for twelve million dollars in damages. The suit was decided in the Shermans' favor because, among other reasons, affidavits were produced from two New Yorkers, Stanley Eichenbaum and Clara Colclaster, who claimed that "variants of the word were known to and used by them many years prior to 1949".
There was also some vague rumour at some point that the word was used to refer to Irish whores. Apparently, some article of Maxim (No I don’t read it, this part I got off the net) had stated that the word was actually invented by turn-of-the-century Scottish coal miners and was used to request “the works” from prostitutes by men too shy to recite specific acts. I think this is a load of bullshit. Who believes Maxim – for satisfying etymological queries anyway?? (Maybe to satisfy other urges…ahem ahem)
Anyway, it is also a fact that a 13 year old in US of A (where else) won $25,000 by correctly texting "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" in just 15 seconds...with no spelling errors.
The word is mostly used by children (and by adults like me who attempt to bring out the child within them sometimes) to means something superbly fantastic, excellent, amazing. Roots of the word have been defined, as Richard Lederer writes in his book Crazy English as follows: super- “above,” cali- “beauty,” fragilistic- “delicate,” expiali- “to atone,” and docious- “educable,” with the sum of these parts signifying roughly “Atoning for educatability through delicate beauty."
SUPERCALIFRAIGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIUS!!!!!!!!!!!
