Floccinaucinihilipilification
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:Wiktionarypar Floccinaucinihilipilification is the act or habit of esteeming or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by said means.
"Floccinaucinihilipilification" is also the title of a 1996 recording from the Chicago-area music group Panicsville released on Nihilist Records.
At 29 letters, it is the longest non-technical word in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which presents it "as enumerated in a well-known rule from the Eton Latin Grammar". The OED dates its first use in literature at 1741 in William Shenstone's Works in Prose and Verse: "I loved him for nothing so much as his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money".
Though the OED gives no specifics on its derivation, the word is said to have been invented as an erudite joke by a student of Eton College, who, upon consulting a Latin textbook, found four words connoting 'nothing' or 'worthless', combined them, and added verb endings:
- floccus, -i a wisp or piece of wool, used idiomatically as flocci non facio ("I don't care [one thread]")
- naucum, -i a trifle
- nihilum, -i nothing; something valueless
- pilus, -i a hair; a bit or a whit; something small and insignificant
It is often spelled with hyphens, and has even spawned the back formations floccinaucical (inconsiderable or trifling) and floccinaucity (a thing of small importance). The OED appears to have overlooked floccinaucinihilipilificatious, which has one letter more than the nominal form, and means "small" or "insignificant."
The word is sometimes misspelled as floccinaucinihilipipification or floccipausinihilipilification.
Pronunciation
A number of pronunciations have been suggested for this word, including the following (shown in IPA):
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- flocci -nauci -nihili-pili-fication
Noted Occurrences
- The word is used in a humorous Geico commercial, in which a judge was struggling to say the word for a child to spell in a spelling bee.
- Jo Brand on the "QI" show - BBC Four Episode 4/11 - Aired Thursday 25th August 10:30pm.
- 1995 Daily Press Briefing by Mike McCurry, President Clinton's Press Secretary
- Used in feminine genitive form of floccinaucinihilipilificatrix by Capt. Z. John Carter when referring to his mother-in-law, Hilda Mae Burroughs, in Number of the Beast by Robert A. Heinlein. The same author also used the masculine genitive form in Puppetmasters earlier in his career.
- Used in the BBC quiz show, Catchword as the player using the longest word in some rounds got a bonus.
- The word appeared in a Double Jeopardy! Round REALLY LONG WORDS clue in game #4962 [1] of Jeopardy!, aired 2006-03-21. Alex Trebek humorously gave up trying to pronounce the word while reading the clue.
- United States Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) proclaimed his floccinaucinihilipilification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in a July 1999 hearing. Helms claimed he learned the word from fellow senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.