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Supercalifragilisticexpialidc

Supercalifragilisticexpialidc

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Supercalifragilisticexpialidc
Supercalifragilisticexpialidc

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”  is a song and single from the 1964 Disney musical film Mary Poppins. It was written by the Sherman Brothers, and sung by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. It also appears in the 2004 stage show version. Because Mary Poppins was a period piece set in 1910, songs that sounded similar to songs of the period were wanting. The movie version finished at #36 in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.

Story context

The song occurs in the chalk-drawing outing animated sequence, just after Mary Poppins wins a horse race. Flush with her victory, she is immediately surrounded by reporters who pepper her with leading questions and comment that she probably is at a loss for words. Mary disagrees, suggesting that at least one word is appropriate for the situation, and begins the song.

Word meaning and origin

The word is a compound word, and said by Richard Lederer in his book Crazy English to be made up of these words: super- “above”, cali- “beauty”, fragilistic- “delicate”, expiali- “to atone”, and -docious “educable”, with all of these parts combined meaning “Atoning for being educable through delicate beauty.”

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. In the column, Herman states that the word “implies all that is grand, great, glorious, splendid, superb, wonderful”.

In 1949, it was used (with spelling recorded in 1949 as “Supercalafajalistickespialadojus”, and in 1951 as “Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus”) as the title of a song by Gloria Parker and Barney Young, subtitled “The Super Song” and recorded by Alan Holmes and His New Tones for Columbia Records.

The word was popularised in the 1964 film Mary Poppins, in which it is used as the title of a song and defined as “something to say when you have nothing to say”.

The Sherman Brothers, who wrote the Mary Poppins song, have given several conflicting explanations for the word’s origin, in one instance claiming to have coined it themselves, based on their memories of having created double-talk words as children. In another instance, they wrote:

When we were little boys in the mid-1930s, we went to a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains, where we were introduced to a very long word that had been passed down in many variations through many generations of kids. … The word as we first heard it was super-cadja-flawjalistic-espealedojus.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as “a nonsense word, originally used esp. by children, and typically expressing excited approbation: fantastic, fabulous”, while Dictionary.com says it is “used as a nonsense word by children to express approval or to represent the longest word in English.”

 

Supercalifragilisticexpialidc
Supercalifragilisticexpialidc

Legal action

In 1965, the song was the subject of an unsuccessful lawsuit by songwriters Gloria Parker and Barney Young against Wonderland Music, Disney’s music publishing subsidiary, and publisher of the song from the film. The plaintiffs alleged that it was a copyright infringement of a 1949 song of their own called “Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus”. Also known as “The Super Song”, “Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus” was recording by Alan Holmes and His New Tones for Columbia Records, with vocal by Hal Marquess and the Holmes Men, and music and lyrics by Patricia Smith (a Gloria Parker pen name) and Don Fenton. Another recording of “Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus”, performed by The Arabian Knights and published by Gloro Records, was released in 1951. The Disney publishers won the lawsuit in part because they produced affidavits showing that “variants of the word were known … many years prior to 1949″.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: What does it mean?

Robert B Sherman, half of the famous songwriting duo behind a string of Disney musical hits, has died. One of his most famous co-creations was the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. What’s the story behind it?

As every child knows, if you say the word loudly enough, you’ll always sound precocious. Few neologisms have become so ingrained in the language and elicit such affection. It was introducing into the Mary Poppins story by American composers Robert and Richard Sherman when they adapted the PL Travers book for the big screen. In the 1964 musical film, starring Julie Andrews, the nanny with magical powers wins an unorthodox race – on merry-go-round horses – and is surrounding by reporters who say she must lose for words.

“On the contrary, there’s a very good word,” she replies, before bursting into song.

“It’s something to say when you don’t know what to say,” says one of the two children, Jane. So in the film, the word has no meaning, although it acts as a powerful keepsake from the children’s magical adventure. In an interview with a website in Los Angeles, Richard Sherman once said it was a word constructing in the same way he and his brother used to make up words in their childhood.

“We used to make up the big double-talk words. we could make a big obnoxious word up for the kids and that’s where it started.

“‘Obnoxious’ is an ugly word so we said ‘atrocious’, that’s very British.

“We started with ‘atrocious’ and then you can sound smart and be precocious.

“We had ‘precocious’ and ‘atrocious’ and we wanted something super-colossal and that’s corny, so we took ‘super’ and did double-talk to get ‘califragilistic’ which means nothing, it just came out that way.

“That’s in a nutshell what we did over two weeks.”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word has now come to mean an expression of excited approval. But it says there was an earlier form of the word, supercalafajalistickespialadojus, first documented in a song in 1949. The song’s writers were unsuccessful in taking legal action for alleged copyright infringement against the company that published the Disney song. Whatever the true origins – and the Shermans always maintained they were unaware of the other song. They popularised the word which, nearly 50 years on, does not seem to have lost its magic.

Fans of Scottish football club Celtic will not want reminding that one of the most memorable newspaper headlines in recent years was coined after lowly Inverness Caledonian went to the fortress of Parkhead and beat Celtic in the Scottish Cup in 2000.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidc
Supercalifragilisticexpialidc
The Sun’s back page said: “Super Caley Go Ballistic Celtic Are Atrocious”

“For me it’s all about rhythm,” says lexicographer Susie Dent. “Although the word has developed a semi-independent life of its own. It is hard not to hear the song in your head as you recite it; and ‘recite’ seems to be the better word than ‘say’.

“It is unwieldy in its length, yes. But it is also beautifully crafting in its beat so that once you learn it. It is hard to forget.

“Its cheerful child-like nonsensicality – a much clumsier word – reflects rather wonderfully the idea of the fantastic and fabulous.”

Matt Wolf, a theatre critic at the International Herald Tribune; says it’s a very good song to choreograph because of all the syllables.

“There’s something about the polysyllabic nature of it that makes you want to move to it. It makes language exciting, it makes words fun.

“This is one of the most hummable of all tunes. Even though it rhymes with ‘something quite atrocious’, it’s called out with so much giddiness and joy that it leaves you feeling good. The absurdity brings to mind Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, he says.

“It’s rather euphonious. It trips off the tongue. It’s a cunningly conceiving run-on word.”

The Real Origin of ‘Supercalifragilistic’

For many people, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and the 1964 movie Mary Poppins are inextricably linking. Indeed, it was this movie that popularized the word. The songwriters, brothers Richard and Robert Sherman, have explained the word as originating in the same way they; like many others, used to make up humorously big, nonsensical words as children.

Coincidentally, there was also a song called Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus that was writing in 1949; and the authors of the song brought a suit against the Sherman brothers for copyright infringement. In the end, the court decided in the Shermans’ favor because; among other things, affidavits were produced that claimed that variants of the word were known many years prior to 1949; making the plaintiffs’ claim unfounded.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidc
Supercalifragilisticexpialidc

 

In fact, the earliest known written record of a variant is for supercaliflawjalisticexpialidoshus from an “A-muse-ings” column by Helen Herman in The Syracuse Daily Orange (Syracuse University), March 10, 1931. The columnist muses about her made-up word, describing it as including “all words in the category of something wonderful” and “though rather long and tiring before one reaches its conclusion, … once you arrive at the end, you have said in one word what it would ordinarily take four paragraphs to explain.”

The word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in Mary Poppins is said to be simply a word used as “something to say when you have nothing to say;” but the mouthful of nonsensical syllables certainly has brought cheer to audiences for decades. That cheer has inspired people to use it; like Helen Herman used her word, for things that are extraordinarily good or wonderful.

 

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