From Now I Know, March 24, 2021:
Supercalifragilisticexpialilawsuit
The word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is a made-up word. Yes, all words are made up, but that one seems particularly so; it has a lot of letters, is difficult to sound out, and is typically used as a nonsense word. You’re likely familiar with it, though. In 1964, the Disney movie “Mary Poppins” took over the box office, delighting people of all ages with its magic and music. In one scene in the movie, Mary and three other members of the cast enter a world populated by animated characters, and during that scene, Mary breaks out in song, singing about one of her favorite words: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” If you’re still not familiar with it, you can see that scene here.
The song, effectively, teaches the audience (both the children on-screen and those of us watching) about the existence of the made-up world; to most of us, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious didn’t exist before 1964. That makes sense. In a 2007 interview, songwriter Richard Sherman claimed to have first coined the word:
How did you make up the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ?
That’s a word we sort of concocted from our childhood when we used to make up double talk words. In the screenplay version of Mary Poppins we wanted Her to give the children a gift they could bring back with them from inside the chalk drawing when they came out into the real world. If it was a tangible thing like a seashell or pine cone it would disappear. So we said, Remember when we used to make up the big double talk words, we could make a big obnoxious word up for the kids and thats wear it started. Obnoxious is an ugly word so we said atrocious word, thats 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 thats 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 nut shell what we did over two weeks. All together you get Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
But that’s not the case. Far from it, in fact. And Sherman probably should have known better: he was sued over the word’s origin more than four decades prior.
Shortly after “Mary Poppins” took the world by storm, two other songwriters, Gloria Parker and Barney Young, took Disney’s music publishing house to court. Parker and Young claimed that “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” violated their copyright. No, they hadn’t written a song that sounded like that one. They had, however, written a song called “Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus” back in 1949. Here are the two words, one on top of the other, so you can see how similar they are.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus
....MORE
And The Register?
They seem to have bet the publication on the word in question:
Super Cali COVID count is somewhat out of focus, server crash and expired cert makes numbers quite atrocious
Super Cali 'leccy bikes are proving quite atrocious, even though the biz insists they really quite precocious
Super Cali optimistic right-to-repair's negotious, even though Apple thought it was something quite atrocious
Super Cali goes ballistic, net neutrality hopeless? Even Ajit Pai's gloating is something quite atrocious
Super Cali health inspectors: Tesla blood awoke us
Super Cali upstart's new rocket test approaches, even though the size of it won't launch a Tesla motor
Super Cali goes ballistic, Starbucks is on notice: Expensive milky coffee is something quite cancerous
Super Cali's futuristic robo-cars in focus. Even though a watchdog says tech is quite atrocious
Super Cali goes – oh no, wait, this is Colorado
Super Cali: Be realistic, 'autopilot' is bogus – even though the sound of it is something quite precocious
Super Cali: Be realistic, get a wa– ah, screw itWanna work for El Reg? Developers needed for headline-writing AI bots
