Supercalifragillisticexpialidocious (listen (help·info), IPA pronunciation: [ˌsu.pəˌkæ.lɪˌfræ.dʒəl.ɪs.tɪkˌɛk.spi.æ.lɪˈdəʊ.ʃəs]) (super-cali-frag-il-listic-ex-pee-al-ee-doe-shus) is a word in the song with the same title in the musical film Mary Poppins (The Sherman Brothers).
In the West End and Broadway musical, 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.[citations needed]
Roots of the word have been defined, as Richard Lederer writes in his book Crazy English as follows: super- "above," cali- "beauty," fragillistic- "delicate," expiali- "to atone," and docious- "educable," with the sum of these parts signifying roughly "Atoning for educatability through delicate beauty."[citations needed] 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 dociousaliexpillisticfragicalirupus". 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. In addition, they spelled and signed each letter of the famous tongue twister, sort of like "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music.
2007-06-23 12:49:07
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answer #1
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answered by Anonymous
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From what I understand it means super. The rest of the world is just silliness, it's the first part of the word that give you the definition.
2007-06-23 20:07:42
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answer #2
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answered by Danielle P 3
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