"SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS":
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
As every child knows, if you say the word loudly enough, you'll always sound precocious.
Few neologisms have become so ingrained in the language and elicit such affection.
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.
In the 1964 musical film, starring Julie Andrews, the nanny with magical powers wins an unorthodox race - on merry-go-round horses - and is surrounded by reporters who say she must be lost for words.
"It's something to say when you don't know what to say,"
says one of the two children, Jane.
So in the film, the word has no meaning,
although it acts as a powerful keepsake from the children's magical adventure.
In an interview with a website in Los Angeles, Richard Sherman once said it was a word constructed in the same way he and his brother used to make up words in their childhood.
"We used to make up the big double-talk words,
we could make a big obnoxious word up for the kids and that's where it started.
"'Obnoxious' is an ugly word so we said 'atrocious', that's very British.
"We started with 'atrocious' and then you can sound smart and be precocious.
"We had 'precocious' and 'atrocious' and we wanted something super-colossal
and that's corny, so we took 'super'
and did double-talk to get 'califragilistic' which means nothing,
it just came out that way.
"That's in a nutshell what we did over two weeks."
But it says there was an earlier form of the word, supercalafajalistickespialadojus, first documented in a song in 1949.
The song's writers were unsuccessful in taking legal action for alleged copyright infringement against the company that published the Disney song.
Whatever the true origins - and the Shermans always maintained they were unaware of the other song - they popularised the word which, nearly 50 years on, does not seem to have lost its magic.
"It makes language exciting, it makes words fun”
Matt Wolf, Theatre critic
"It is unwieldy in its length, yes,
but it is also beautifully crafted in its beat so that once you learn it,
it is hard to forget.
"Its cheerful child-like nonsensicality - a much clumsier word -
reflects rather wonderfully the idea of the fantastic and fabulous."
"This is one of the most hummable of all tunes.
Even though it rhymes with 'something quite atrocious',
it's called out with so much giddiness and joy
that it leaves you feeling good.
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