Floccinaucinihilipilification
Floccinaucinihilipilification ( ) is the longest word in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary with 29 letters and means contempt .
Etymology and morphology
It is believed to have been invented by a student at Eton College . It continues as a compound from the Latin words floccus (flake), naucum (Nutshell) nihilum (Nothing) and pilus (hair), designate all something very small thing worthless, and the suffix -fication together. The word was first used literarily in 1741 by the English writer William Shenstone . To make it easier to read, he wrote the word with hyphens: I loved him for nothing so much as his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money . On March 8, 1826, Walter Scott wrote in his diary I have succeeded in putting the matters perfectly out of my mind since I cannot help them, and have arrived at a flocci-pauci-nihili-pili-fication of money, and I thank Shenstone for inventing that long word . Scott was evidently familiar with Shenstone's work and thought he was the inventor of the word, which he did not quite accurately render. In any case, the word must have fascinated him, because he repeated it in the diary entries of July 16, 1827 and March 18, 1829, each in the different spelling he used.
From 1826 Robert Southey also used the derived noun Floccinaucity (nullity) and the adjective floccinaucical (unimportant, trivial).
Robert A. Heinlein also used the masculine form Floccinaucinihilipilificator (The Puppet Masters, 1951) and the feminine form Floccinaucinihilipilificatrix (The Number of the Beast, 1980).
application
In 1983 the British magazine Punch titled an article Floccinaucinihilipilification Falklands! , a satire about the Falkland Islands, regarded by many as insignificant and for whose possession Great Britain had recently waged the Falklands War .
Some US politicians, such as Senator Jesse Helms , use it as a rhetorical term to express strong disapproval.
At a press conference on December 6, 1995, it was used by Mike McCurry, spokesman for then US President Bill Clinton , with a rather humorous intention: There's a little bit of floccinaucinihilipilification going on here… boy, you're going to have a great time with that, getting that in the transcript - the longest word in the dictionary .
The word was also mentioned in an interview by British musician Matthew Bellamy .
In August 2019, the Indian central bank used the word in its report and sparked wide media coverage.
swell
- ^ Sir Walter Scott: The Journal of Sir Walter Scott , text of the diary at Project Gutenberg .
- ^ Punch, 284, 1983 (June 22, No. 7439), pp. 14-15.
- ↑ See Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr .: Senator Helms' Floccinaucinihilipilification ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Editorial in Arms Control Today , July / August 1999.
- ↑ Press Briefing by Mike Curry ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Minutes of the press conference, ed. from the Office of the Press Secretary of the White House .
- ↑ From panglossian to floccinaucinihilipilification , Business Standard report of August 23, 2019
Web links
- Pronunciation (MP3; 43 kB) on alphadictionary.com .