Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (pronounced /ˌsuːpɚˌkælɪˌfrædʒəlˌɪstɪkˌɛkspiːˌælɪˈdoʊʃəs/) is an English word in the song with the same title in the musical film Mary Poppins. The song was written by the Sherman Brothers, and sung by Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke.

Since Mary Poppins was a period piece set in 1910, period sounding songs were wanted. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious sounds like contemporary music hall songs "Boiled Beef and Carrots" and "Any Old Iron".[1]

Contents

Origin

According to Richard M. Sherman, co-writer of the song with his brother, Robert, the word was created by them in two weeks, mostly out of double-talk.[2]

The roots of the word have been defined[3] as follows: super- "above", cali- "beauty", fragilistic- "delicate", expiali- "to atone", and docious- "educable", with the sum of these parts signifying roughly "Atoning for educability through delicate beauty." It should be noted that although the word contains recognizable English morphemes, it does not follow the rules of English morphology as a whole. The morpheme -istic is a suffix in English, whereas the morpheme ex- is typically a prefix; so following normal English morphological rules, it would represent two words: supercalifragilistic and expialidocious. As one word, it also violates the rule that the letter c cannot sound like a k when followed by an e, an i or a y. An acceptable alternative spelling is supercalifragilisticexpealidocious, replacing the "pi" with "pe."[citation needed]

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According to the 1964 Walt Disney film, it is defined as "what you say when you don't know what to say".[4]

In the 1942 movie "The Undying Monster" (directed by John Brahm), the character Rob Curtis (played by James Ellison) says of character Christy, "She has an overactive supercalifragilis."[citation needed] He goes on to define the word as "female intuition." This passage does not appear in the 1936 novel by Jessie Douglas Kerruish[citation needed]. The screenplay was written by: Lillie Hayward and Michael Jacoby.

Legal action

In 1965, the song was the subject of an unsuccessful lawsuit by songwriters Gloria Parker and Barney Young against Wonderland Music, who published the version of the song from the Walt Disney film.[5] The plaintiffs alleged that it was a copyright infringement of a 1951 song of their own called Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus. Also known as The Super Song, Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus was recorded by Alan Holmes and his New Tones on Columbia Records, Vocal by Hal Marquess and the Holmes Men, music and lyrics by Patricia Smith a Gloria Parker pen name. In addition, Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus was recorded on Gloro Records(45) by The Arabian Knights. The Disney publishers won the lawsuit partially because affidavits were produced showing that "variants of the word were known (...) many years prior to 1949."

On Broadway

In the West End and Broadway musical, Mary Poppins and Jane and Michael Banks visit Mrs Corry's shop to buy 'an ounce of conversation', to find that Mrs Corry has run out of conversation. She does, however have some letters, and Jane and Michael each pick out 7, with Mary choosing one also. As Bert, Mary and the rest of the ensemble struggle to create words out of the 15 letters, Mary reminds them that they can always use the same letter twice, and creates the word (and song) supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.[citation needed]

In popular culture

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See also

References

 This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references (ideally, using inline citations). Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007)
  1. ^ The Making of Mary Poppins, 2004
  2. ^ LAist Interview: Richard M. Sherman, November 2, 2007
  3. ^ by Richard Lederer in his book Crazy English
  4. ^ Mary Poppins (1964) - Memorable quotes
  5. ^ "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" origins, The Straight Dope

External links

Look up supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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