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super cali fragilistic expi ali docious, without the spaces - it's actually in an online dictionary, oddly enough.

2007-04-18 09:39:51 · answer #1 · answered by Lucian Oldershaw 2 · 0 0

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! pronunciation: [ˌsu.pəˌkæ.lɪˌfræ.dʒəl.ɪs.tɪkˌɛk.spi.æ.lɪˈdəʊ.ʃəs]) is a word in the song with the same title in the musical film Mary Poppins and in the musical play Mary Poppins by Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman (The Sherman Brothers).

The song describes how using the word is a miraculous way to talk one's self out of difficult situations and even a way to change one's mood. It occurs in the film's animated sequence where Mary Poppins is harangued by reporters after winning a horse race and responds to a reporter's claim that there are not words to describe her feelings of the moment, and her life long dream of being in theater. Mary disagrees with that claim and begins the song about one word which she can use to describe her feelings. Following the successes of the film and musical play, the word has been used as an adjective signifying rather redundant superlatives, such as "the most absolutely stunningly fantastic" of experiences.

In the West End and Broadway versions of the musical play Mary Poppins, everyone runs out of conversations, and Mary and the children go 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 (whose existence Jane doubts). Mary says that you could use some letters more than one time and creates the longest word of all in this song.[citations needed]

Critics' belief that the word itself has obscure origins has created some debate about when it was first used historically. According to Robert B. Sherman, co-writer of the song with his brother, Richard, the word was created mostly out of double-talk.

Roots of the word have been defined, as Richard Lederer writes in his book Crazy English as follows: super- "above," cali- "beauty," fragilistic- "delicate," expiali- "to atone," and docious- "educable," with the sum of these parts signifying roughly "Atoning for educatability through delicate beauty." This explication of its connotations suits the fictional character of Mary Poppins, in that she presents herself as both superlatively beautiful and also supremely intelligent and capable of great achievements.

According to the film version of the song, "you can say it backwards, which is dociousaliexpilisticfragicalirupus". Julie Andrews, the star of Mary Poppins, has said that her husband at the time, Tony Walton, devised this backwards version of the word.Strictly speaking, in that word, only each individual root is reversed, rather than the order of each letter, with the exception of the part rupus, which is somewhat reversed, misspelled, and mispronounced. In contrast, the musical play's version of the song presents a version of the word with all the letters reversed.

2007-04-18 16:41:48 · answer #2 · answered by quatt47 7 · 0 0

you just spelled it

2007-04-18 16:38:50 · answer #3 · answered by ck5-rWES 2 · 0 2

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