I've been doing crossword puzzles every day for mental exercise for as long as I can remember, but this week was the first time I've ever encountered supercalifragilisticexpialidocious as a crossword clue.
Everybody who is my age knows the word, but to be honest I didn't realize it had a definition, so I had to look that up for the blog. Apparently its history goes back to the 1930s:
"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".The word was popularized 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 don't know what 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."
There are additional "things you wouldn't know" at the link, including information about the backwards version, a Mahatma Gandhi pun ("super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis") and an old Randy Rainbow parody.
Thanks, but no thanks. My granddaughter was in the play “Mary Poppins” at school last year and I had finally gotten over hearing that ear worm playing on repeat in my head. Now I’ll be hearing it again for who knows how long….😏
ReplyDeleteUm, how about a "spoiler alert" next time? I hadn't started today's NYT crossword yet, and now my brain is primed with all these answers from your screenshot.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I'm unsure about the puzzle answer AONE, though?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dictionary.com/browse/a-one
DeleteGandhi 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. A super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
ReplyDelete