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."
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a nonsensical word, origin in the 1930s based on super, popularized by the 1964 film Mary Poppins. It simply means “extraordinarily good” or describes something as being great or extraordinary.
It was introduced into the Mary Poppins story by American composers Robert and Richard Sherman when they adapted the PL Travers book for the big screen.
'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' is in the OED! The song containing the word was the subject of a copyright infringement suit in 1965...
It turns out the first established use of the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”—or at least a word that comes extremely close—was not in London, by a mysterious nanny or a chimney sweep. It came from Helen Herman, a student at Syracuse University in 1931.
In that case, what's the longest word in the English language dictionary? It's pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
And, actually, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is not even the longest word in English. This extra-long word (that approximately means “fantastic”) was popularized by the movie Mary Poppins and was eventually added to the dictionary.
The longest single-word town names in the U.S. are Kleinfeltersville, Pennsylvania and Mooselookmeguntic, Maine. The longest official geographical name in Australia is Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya. It has 26 letters and is a Pitjantjatjara word meaning "where the Devil urinates".
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, a 36 character word supposedly meaning a fear of long words, is not officially known as the longest word in the English language despite its great length. It might even have been put together after someone started wondering what the longest word is.
The word "floccinaucinihilipilification" means "the estimation of something as worthless." It's an 18th-century coinage that combines four Latin prefixes meaning "nothing."
No. It does not contain B, H, J, K, M, N, Q, V, W, Y or Z.
If you said antidisestablishmentarianism, you're wrong. The longest word in the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary is currently acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, which refers to "a tough rigid plastic used especially for automobile parts and building materials," also helpfully known as ABS.
1. methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl… isoleucine. You'll notice there's an ellipsis here, and that's because this word, in total, is 189,819 letters long, and it's the chemical name for the largest known protein, titin.
The Titin, or connectin, protein is the largest protein in the human body and consists of up to 35,000 amino acids—hence the incredibly long “word”.
Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic. This is the longest word in English which is composed of seven words. This 52-letter word was coined by Dr. Edward Strother to describe the spa waters in Bath, England.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is one of the longest words in the dictionary — and, in an ironic twist, is the name for a fear of long words.
But it's also used in almost every English-speaking country. In England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Australia, India, Canada (usually), and New Zealand, Z is pronounced as zed. It's derived from the Greek letter zeta.
Place with the Longest Single Word in the World
The place with the longest single word is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. At 85 letters, this Māori name for a hill in New Zealand is often truncated to Taumata.
We dare you to try to pronounce it.
But if you visit the North Island of New Zealand, there's one word that no local will give you a hard time about mispronouncing. In fact, they often shorten it themselves. Ready? It's Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.
The longest word in the English language, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, won primary school speller Jemimah Elise Sampson, the East Coast Radio's Last Kid Standing title, as seen in the video below published by the East Coast Radio.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word entered in the most trusted English dictionaries.
The longest word in the standard German dictionary is Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung – which is the word for motor vehicle liability insurance. But at 36 letters, it's rather puny. Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften, a touch longer at 39 letters, is the language's longest non-dictionary word.