A woman in Virginia Beach, Virginia, wants to know the pronunciation of floccinaucinihilipilification, and why such a long word means “the habit of estimating something as worthless.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Floccinaucinihilipilification”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is June Gale from Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Hey, June, welcome.
What can we do for you?
The longest F word in the dictionary has 29 letters, and I can’t spell it right now because I don’t have it written down.
Yeah.
And I’ve had difficulty pronouncing it, and my granddaughter couldn’t pronounce it.
And it means basically worthless or of little value.
And I’d like to know how to pronounce it.
And also, how could such a huge word mean, you know, of little value?
I bet I know the word you’re talking about.
Yeah, phloxenosa niolipilification.
Oh, I got it wrong.
Phloxenosa niolipilification.
I have been practicing. Can I try it?
Yes, please.
Okay. One second.
Bloxy, nausy, nihili, pillification.
Sure.
That’s pretty darn good.
That’s great. Yep, that’s the word.
And it’s a stunt word if it’s going to make you feel any better.
It’s not like a word like this just pops out of somebody’s head as the word that they need for the moment.
No, it takes a lot of effort. You should probably replace your electrolytes, Gene.
Well, I’ll tell you, I was looking online and I came across this YouTube video where someone that belongs in parliament, I forget what they’re called, but in Australia, happened to use that word while he was addressing parliament.
And people thought he was, you know, snooty and, you know, like that.
But I thought, oh, but I know what that word means.
They don’t give people that much credit.
Well, you know, I remember Senator Jesse Helms used it back in the day.
It’s a stunt word, though.
It really is.
It’s a show-offy word.
Well, if I could pronounce it quickly and use it in a sentence, I plan on showing off.
Okay, go for it.
Here’s the thing.
If you can pronounce this word fluidly without stumbling like I did, then you deserve and you have permission to use it.
So good for you.
Phloxynose nihilipilification.
There we go.
Perfect. And so what happened was this word was coined out of a bunch of words that mean nothing or very little.
So phloxy, F-L-O-C-C-I, and na-U-C-I, and nihili, N-I-H-I-L-I, and pili, P-I-L-I, and then fication just as a suffix that turns all those affixes into a noun, basically.
So it’s a noun about estimating something to be worth nothing.
The first use that we know of in print was by a guy named William Shinstone, who I have no idea what he’s known for, in 1741.
And he segments it out with hyphens between the syllable, or sorry, with the segments, the root segments of it, kind of indicating that he’s aware of the origins of this word.
Right. Okay. Okay. Well, I sure do appreciate that.
Outstanding.
And I’m going to keep practicing that word.
There you go.
Yeah, thank you for your call. We really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
Take care now.
All right, June. Bye-bye.
Bye, June.
You all said.
Bye.
