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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a song and a long word from the movie Mary Poppins (and in the musical version).
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 mood. 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.
In the West End version (probably the same for the Broadway one), every one runs out of conversations and Mary and the kids head to Mrs. Corry's shop, where you can buy them. Jane and Michael pick out some letters and spell a few words. Bert and Mrs. Corry use the letters to make up some words too, which Jane doesn't think they exist. Mary says you could use some letters more than one time and makes the longest word of all.
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.
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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 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). ... The musical version says it with all the letters reversed instead
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In popular culture
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The eclectic songwriter and performer Prince included a song called "Superfunkycalifragisexy" on The Black Album.
Also in The Simpsons, Professor Frink refers to microcalifragilistics as a field of science.
In Neil Gaiman's 8, Morpheus's sister Death uses this phrase when she meets Morpheus in a park feeding the birds. She states that her brother's actions remind her of a quote from the movie Mary Poppins ("You do that (feeding pigeons) too much, you know what you get? Fat Pigeons!"), then she talks about how much she loves the movie and eventually ends up explaining her brother the meaning of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" ("Fantabulous word, huh? It means y'know, great. Wonderful, ginchy, gnarly.") She also uses the term in Captain Atom
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)and "superfranticunproductivenothinglegislation"
Parody writer Spaff has produced two songs to this tune. The first was about Madonna's immensely long name (Esther Madonna Veronica Louise Ciccone Ritchie) and the second was called Super-Powers-Go-Ballistic-Execute-Bin-Laden.
A famous comedy bit from The Benny Hill Show called "Continental Cabaret" featured Benny Hill, his sidekick Jackie Wright and the beautiful and scantily-clad Diana Darvey.* Darvey called Hill and Wright, "a pair of twits", then spelled out the word twits while emphasizing each letter with a finger-poke to Hill's chest and then pronounced the word again while rubbing Hill's chest. Hill then called Darvey, "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". Darvey asked how that word is spelled and Wright, much to Hill's disappointment, immediately spelled it out before Hill could even raise his finger.
The television show House of Mouse had an episode where Goofy and Max sing a song called "Soup or Salad, Fries or Biscuits, Extra Olives, Donuts." It was sung to the same tune as Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
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Parody artists Adam and Andrew mentioned the word in their song Hollerback Boy.
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See also
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic
Synitopiakriptonifsitonium
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