Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" is the 34-lettered song title from the 1964 movie Mary Poppins. As a song title, it is a proper noun, but the word, and variations, has entered the English language as an adjective and an adverb. It is one of the longest words in the English language. According to the Sherman Brothers, the word was created by them when they were boys at summer camp.
The song describes using the word as a miraculous way to talk oneself out of difficult situations, and even as a way to change one's life. The song appears in the film's animated sequence where Mary Poppins is harangued by reporters after winning a horse race and responds to one claiming there are not words to describe her feelings of the moment. Mary disagrees with that and begins the song about one word she can use.
The word itself has obscure origins, pertaining as to when it was first used, but the roots are fairly clear, as Richard Lederer wrote in his book Crazy English: super- "above," cali- "beauty," fragilistic- "delicate," expiali- "to atone," and docious- "educable," the sum meaning roughly "Atoning for extreme and delicate beauty while still being highly educable." This is the perfect word for Mary Poppins to use, being that she thinks of herself as incredibly beautiful but also extremely intelligent, which makes up for it.
Trivia
- In 1965 the song was the subject of an unsuccessful lawsuit by two song writers against the makers of the Disney film. They alleged that it was a copyright infringement of a 1951 song of theirs - Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus. The suit failed because affidavits were produced to the effect that "variants of the word were known to and used by them many years prior to 1949." and because no copyright was registered with the Registrar of Copyrights in Washington D.C.
- According to Robert B. Sherman, co-writer of the song, the word was mostly created out of double-talk.
- According to the song, "you can say it backwards, which is dociousaliexpilisticfragicalirupus". Mary Poppins star Julie Andrews says it was her husband at the time, Tony Walton, who devised the backwards version of the word that is heard near the end of the song, Dociousaliexpilisticfragicalirupus (although, strictly speaking, only each individual root is reversed, rather than the order of each letter, with the exception of "rupus" which is somewhat reversed, misspelled, and mispronounced). ...
- It was ranked #36 in the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Songs in Movie History.
In popular culture
- The headline "Super Caley go Ballistic, Celtic are Atrocious" was used by The Sun newspaper in 2000 following a famous upset in the Scottish Cup and was voted pun of the year for the year 2000 on The Big Breakfast. [1]
- The eclectic songwriter and performer Prince included a song called "Superfunkycalifragisexy" on The Black Album.
- The television series The Simpsons had an episode called "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(Annoyed Grunt)cious", which is a parody of the Mary Poppins movie. The "Annoyed Grunt" in the title refers to Homer Simpson's now-famous exclamation of D'oh!.
- Also in The Simpsons, Professor Frink refers to supercalifragilistics as a field of science.
- In the rap group Public Enemy's song "Cold Lampin with Flavor," the word is transformed into "Super-calafraga-hestik-alagoothki," fitting the rhyme scheme and contributing to a theme of gibberish in the song.
- The song's melody is also frequently used with altered lyrics, for the purposes of political satire, by the Capitol Steps. Recent examples include: "SuperCaliforniaRecallFreakShowWasAtrocious" (2003) and "SuperJealousFragileMissWithSexualNeurosis" (1998).
- The Vandals made a cover featuring all the words of the song, but to a different tune, that appeared on the album "Live Fast Diarrhea".
- Amateur Transplants, best known for the London Underground song, parodied the song to refer to a fictitious drug, Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin.
- This word has also been altered in a Disney program called "House of Mouse". The episode had a Mary Poppins theme, because the penguins from the movie were aiding Goofy in his waitering and whenever Goofy's son Max needed help in his service, Goofy sang a song that was meant to aid Max in his waitering. The main words that were sung were "Soup or salad, fries or biscuits, extra olives, doughnuts."
- Parody writer Spaff has produced two songs to this tune. The first was about Madonna's immensely long name (Esther Madge Veronica Louise Ciccone Ritchie) and the second was called Super-Powers-Go-Ballistic-Execute-Bin-Laden.
- This one (or variations thereof) has made the rounds of Internet e-mails for some years now: "Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed (or plagued) by halitosis." This line appeared in the British Television series Red Dwarf.
- ESPN anchor Chris Berman used the nickname for former New York Yankees third baseman Scott Brosius, calling him "Scott 'Supercallifragilisticexpiali' Brosius".
- In 2006, Orlando Brown redid this song for DisneyMania, Vol. 4. Its title is Super Cali (BoiOB Version).
- A lawyers' parody of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" appears at this page: [[2]].