![]() Combining all of these parts leads to ‘Atoning for being educable through delicate beauty.’”Įnglish is one of the world’s largest and most spoken languages. Wikipedia also includes an interesting aside: Richard Lederer in his book Crazy English breaks this “compound” word down into its component parts: “super – ‘above’, cali – ‘beauty’, fragilistic – ‘delicate’, expiali – ‘to atone’, and docious – ‘educable’. The Shermans insisted they were unaware of the previous versions. In the column, Herman states that the word ‘implies all that is grand, great, glorious, splendid, superb, wonderful.’” That was their story anyway … until they got sued.Īccording to Wikipedia, “The plaintiffs alleged it was a copyright infringement of their 1949 song ‘Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus,’ also known as ‘The Super Song.’ĭisney, however, won the suit because they were able to demonstrate that versions of the word pre-existed the 1949 song.Īgain from Wikipedia: “The Oxford English Dictionary first records the word (with a spelling of ‘supercaliflawjalisticexpialadoshus’) in the column titled ‘A-muse-ings’ by Helen Herman in the Syracuse University Daily Orange, dated March 10, 1931. That’s in a nutshell what we did over two weeks.” “We started with ‘atrocious’,” Sherman said, “and then you can sound smart and be ‘precocious’ and we wanted something super-colossal that’s corny, so we took ‘super’ and did double-talk to get ‘califragilistic,’ which means nothing, it just came out that way. So it was natural for them to come up with a word that is “really quite atrocious if you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious.” In an interview, Richard Sherman said he and his brother used to make up “big double-talk words” when they were kids at camp in the 1930s. Sherman, composed the music and lyrics for all the songs in that iconic film of boomer youth, apparently thought so too. ![]() Most assume it was merely a neologism (made-up word) original to “Mary Poppins.” Richard M. There are plenty of other peculiar words in English: ragamuffin, rigmarole, topsy-turvy, lollygagging, poppycock, brouhaha, kerfuffle, cattywampus, serendipitous, dipsy-doodle, whirligig, and snafu (a military acronym for “situation normal, all fouled up,” only the original employed a more colorful word beginning with “f”).īut the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) word is “supercalifragiliticexpialidocious,” which has a back story that will leave you flummoxed, if not dumbfounded. There is no word “plussed.” Doesn’t that make you feel surprised, confused and unsure how to react? If so, that makes you nonplussed by the word “nonplussed.” No doubt the Brits would classify our inversion of the word as just another of our “jackasseries,” which is an actual word and pretty much self-explanatory, even to us. The original meaning is “surprised and confused, unsure how to react.” In North America, however, it means … exactly the opposite! Americans must have assumed that the “non” was a prefix (it’s not “not”). Spoilers, of course, leave us nonplussed, which is an especially discombobulating word. But there’s a modern website,, which promises “No Spoiler Movie Reviews.” If you used any of these in Words with Friends or Wordle, your opponent would certainly be flabbergasted, possibly even blutterbunged, which is an old word, probably dating back to Middle English, largely obsolete. I’m gobsmacked just looking at the list.Įnglish has a lot of interesting ways to say, essentially, that you’re “surprised, confused and possibly speechless.” The sheer number of such words, and the creative energy invested in inventing them, indicate that this is one of the core experiences in the human condition.
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