Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Gillian. I’m calling from Fort Worth, Texas. How are you?

Great. Welcome to the program, Gillian. What can we do for you?

Oh, thank you. Well, I had this question about this super long word that children, my daughter uses, and her and her friends try to say it as fast as they can.

I’ve actually looked up the word, and it says it’s a nonsense word, so I always wanted to know where the word came from, how it came into existence, and why is it so fascinating to children.

And the word is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

-huh.

Now, would you spell that for us?

Can I spell it? S-U-P-E-R-C-A-L-I-F-R-A-G-I-L-I-S-T-I-C-E-X-P-I-A-L-I-D-O-C-I-O-U-F.

Oh, my goodness.

Bravo, bravo.

Oh, man.

We have our script spelling bee, champ.

One more time.

No, just kidding.

That is great.

Have you been practicing?

We’ve been practicing for about five years with that word.

Oh, wow.

And so it says spell it, and a couple of times I’ve gotten it wrong, and I said, I’m going to beat this 10-year-old one day, and I’m going to spell that word.

And so you’re calling about supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and what do you know about the word? What do you know about its providence or its history?

I don’t know much about it, except it says it’s a nonsense word in English language, meaning fantastic.

And so how does fantastic translate into such a long, ridiculous word? That kid loves.

Yeah, well, that’s a fair question.

Have you seen the movie Mary Poppins?

I have not, but I’ve heard of it.

All right.

Do you know that there’s a song in the movie and the stage play by this name?

Yeah, I’ve heard that song. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious.

I can’t do the rest of it.

Can I do the little London lies?

Well, that’s the place that most, actually, was it in the stage play? I know it was in the movie, but that’s the place that most people heard this word for the first time.

Yeah, I know it wasn’t in the books, the P.L. Travers books. It wasn’t in those books.

And the movie was huge at the time.

It was enormous, and it is still a constant favorite, even though Dick Van Dyke has the worst Cockney accent I’ve ever seen on a human being.

He was so great in that movie.

His acting was good, but his voice was atrocious, and somebody should have helped him out.

And he’s dancing.

Yeah, he’s dancing.

But in any case, so that’s where most people came across supercalifragilisticexvalidocious.

Right.

But it’s actually a little older than that.

There’s some evidence, right, Marth, that it goes back maybe to the 1930s and it was kind of floating around as a nonsense made-up word.

Because that’s the thing. It’s just a goofy word, a show-off word, just to kind of, it’s a performance word. You say it just to show off and be a little smart-alecky and just kind of like, you know, replay with it.

Yeah, but it’s been around since the 1930s or so.

There was actually a lawsuit about that use of the word in the movie because some other people had written a song that was somewhat similar, supercalifagilistic expialidocious, something like that.

I mean, but it’s spelled differently.

But similar.

Yeah, but the upshot of the lawsuit was that they didn’t have any claim because the word had already been floating around, for one thing.

And their song didn’t sound like the song in the movie.

So it’s been around.

We don’t know who invented it, but it’s just one of those playful, crazy English words.

It doesn’t have a word origin, in other words.

No, as far as we know, it doesn’t.

We can’t pin it down.

So much of the language is like that.

But I would say that Mary Poppins, the movie, is the popularizer, and sometimes the popularizer is more important than the coiner.

Definitely.

It was great talking to you about these extremely long words.

Gillian, thank you for entertaining us so much.

Yeah, it was fun. Thanks a lot.

Thank you so much.

Have a good day. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you want to talk about words, call us, 877-929-9673, or send your emails to words@waywordradio.org.