The mouthful supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is often associated with the song by the same name in the 1964 movie Mary Poppins. But versions of this word were around for decades, including in a 1949 song called “Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus.” That similarly formed the basis of an unsuccessful copyright infringement lawsuit against brothers Richard and Robert Sherman, who wrote the song for the Disney movie. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is Older Than Mary Poppins”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Yes, this is Ramon. We are calling from Carn City, Texas.
All right. What’s on your mind?
My kids wanted to know exactly where the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious came from.
Could you spell that, please?
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Have they been watching Mary Poppins?
They have, and one of my sons was singing it while we were listening to you guys a few weekends ago.
And then that’s what we’re trying to understand is just exactly how that word came to be.
Yeah.
And now we’ve administered an earworm to all of America.
Everybody’s singing the song going, oh, why did they have to say that word?
Yeah, well, it was definitely popularized by the 1964 Disney movie about Mary Poppins.
But it was actually floating around longer.
Or versions of that word were floating around longer than that.
In the 1930s.
Yeah, 1931.
We find it in print in a newspaper in Syracuse, New York.
And it’s spelled a little differently, but it’s very similar.
Supercaloflogilistic expialidocious.
So it’s just as difficult to spell as the way they did it.
Yeah, it’s written by a woman named Helen Herman.
And this may not be the first use ever, but it’s the first use we know of.
And she’s talking about why this wild, nonsensical word is so useful to her.
And she says, it’s very adequate in any type of appreciation.
When asked how you liked a certain movie or what you think of so-and-so or what your opinion is of Santa Claus,
You can merely answer supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and you will have condensed many thoughts into one.
Interesting. Very interesting.
Yeah, that’s…
So we all thought that it was just a word they made up for the movie,
But that’s interesting that it actually originated way before that.
Well, you know, it’s funny that you should mention that because there were lawsuits about the song and the movie.
So the song was written by two brothers in the name of Sherman, I believe.
And they were sued by somebody who had written a couple different versions of a song using the word in 1949 and 1951, Parker and Young.
And they lost because there was earlier evidence that the word already existed, not only from this 1931 article, but a few other places as well.
Yeah, or various versions of that word.
Various versions of the word.
But close enough where the judge in the case basically said, I’m just going to treat all these versions as one word, and I’m going to rule for the defendant.
Yeah, so they actually lost the lawsuit, the people who were trying to get money from Disney.
And they sued them for some huge sum of money because it was a very popular film.
Yeah.
Right.
It’s so interesting that a word so old also was in debate in the legal system as well.
Yeah, that must have been a fun trial to cover, huh?
The headlines write themselves.
And as a matter of fact, there was a story by our colleague, Ben Zimmer, who writes about language in the Boston Globe a few years ago.
And the headline for that is Super Cala Contentious.
And he talks all at length about the words, history, and the lawsuit.
Wow.
Well, that’s very interesting.
My kids will be excited to know the origin of it.
Great.
Ramon, thank you so much.
Absolutely.
I appreciate you guys.
Take care.
Okay.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
All right.
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