Friday, March 16, 2012

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious


Mary Poppins(Julie Andrews) brought joy to children through magical, easy to follow, and wonderful songs such as, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", "A Spoonful of Sugar", and "Chim Chim Cher-ee". Out of all the songs in the musical film my favourite song is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It is such a fun an exciting and upbeat song with the focus on the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

"It's Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious, even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious, if you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Umdiddle umdidllei, Umdiddle umdidllei..."

In relation to commmunication concepts, the assigned meanings of words actually depends on the society and people who use the word. After the release of Mary Poppins in 1964, the use of "supercalafragilisticexpialidocious" was popularised. Both children and adults used it to sound precocious. It gave them the sense of happiness and content by frequently using the word to show their new vocabulary

Thought to be a nonsense word, but "supercalafragilisticexpialidocious" actually contains elements of real Greek and Latin roots:

super - above, over, extreme
cali - beauty
fragilistic - delicate
expiali - to atone, to make amends
docious - educable, able to learn

Piecing the pieces together, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious translates roughly to "atoning for educability through delicate beauty" or atoning for extreme and delicate beauty while remaining highly educable. It is an awesome word to use when you are loss for words or even when you are playing games like hangman.

So what is/are your favourite word(s)?


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