Antidisestablishmentarianism

Antidisestablishmentarianism (pronounced an-tee-dis-uh-stab-lish-muhn-tair-ee-uh-niz-uhm)

Opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established (state) church.  It was used especially in nineteenth century England by those opposed to separating the Church of England (Anglican) from the civil government.

1838: A compound word: anti + dis + establishment + arian + ism.  Anti- was from the Middle English from the Latin from the Ancient Greek.  It was a prefixal use of antí; akin to the Sanskrit ánti (opposite), the Latin ante and the Middle Dutch ende.  Dis- was a Latin prefix used to impart the meanings “apart,” “asunder,” “away,” “utterly,” or having a privative, negative, or reversing force.  In English, it’s long been used freely, especially with these latter senses, as an English formative.  Establishment was from the Old French establissement (and persists in Modern French as établissement), from the verb establir from the Old Occitan establir, from Latin stabilīre (present active infinitive of stabiliō); cognates included the Occitan establir, the French établir and the Italian stabilire.  The –arian suffix dates from circa 1530 and was from the Late Latin ariānus.  It was a suffix forming personal nouns corresponding to Latin adjectives ending in -ārius or English adjectives or nouns ending in –ary and subsequently proved productive in English with other Latinate stems, forming nouns denoting a person who supports, advocates, or practices a doctrine, theory, or set of principles associated with the base word (authoritarian, vegetarian etc).  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek –ismos & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, often through the Latin –ismus & -isma, though sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Greek.  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form action nouns from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  The antonym (obviously) is disestablishmentarianism.  Antidisestablishmentarianism & antidisestablishmentarianist are nouns, antidisestablishmentarianistic is an adjective and antidisestablishmentarian is a noun & adjective; the noun plural is antidisestablishmentarianisms.

Portrait of King Henry VIII (circa 1509), oil on canvas by an unknown artist, Denver Art Museum.  This is the earliest portrait of Henry (as king) known to have survived.

It was Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England (and Ireland after 1541) 1509-1547) who created what endures in England to this day as the established church, the phrase “Church of England” becoming frequently used immediately after the act of separation in 1534.  The king separated the English church from the authority of Rome to become one of a number created in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, not because of any theological or doctrinal differences, but in order to secure the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536).  Having found the Clement VII (Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, 1478–1534; pope 1523-1534) unwilling to annul, he had himself instead declared supreme head of the Church in England, the schism with Rome (with the exception of a brief interruption), unhealed to this day.  Problem solved.  There is a distinction between the Church in England and the Church of England, the roots of Christianity in the British Isles established during England’s time as a province of the Roman Empire early in the first millennium.  From these beginnings there were forks and regional divergences until 597 when a Gregorian mission by Augustine of Canterbury visited, Christianity in England from that point subject to the authority of the Pope.  So it continued until 1534, England even once providing a pope (Adrian IV, circa 1100- 1159, pope 1154-1159), noted now for his contribution to the Irish problem, something unsolved even now.

Generally pointless and the Germans do it better

Romanus Pontifex non concedit. Tomb of Clement VII, carved in marble by Nanni di Baccio Bigio (pseudonym of Giovanni Lippi (circa 1508-1568), Santa Maria Sopra, Minerva.  Had the times been different, Clement may have been inclined towards pragmatism and found some loophole permitting an annulment but given the geopolitics, he was constrained.

With 28 letters and twelve syllables, antidisestablishmentarianism is often cited as the longest word in English.  However, floccinaucinihilipilification (a waggish schoolboy pseudo-Latin creation meaning “the act or habit of describing or regarding something as worthless” (the construct being floccus (a wisp) +‎ naucum (a trifle) +‎ nihilum (nothing) +‎ pilus (a hair) + -fication (process of becoming)) is one letter longer and the longest non-technical word in English (there is the 29-letter plural form "antidisestablishmentarianisms" which ties with floccinaucinihilipilification and the 30-letter "antidisestablishmentarianistic" but such derived forms are dismissed by the editors of dictionaries as artificial concoctions).  It was once used in a debate in the UK's House of Commons, although, even that wasn’t the longest ever spoken in Westminster, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a factitious creation said to mean “a lung disease caused by inhalation of very fine silica dust usually found in volcanos”) having been earlier used during a select committee enquiry.  An opportunist extension of the medical term pneumonoconiosis, it was coined during the proceedings of the National Puzzlers' League convention (a natural home of English eccentricity) in 1935 in an attempt to create English’s longest word but was dismissed by dictionaries as fake, clinicians and textbooks still referring to the disease as pneumonoconiosis, pneumoconiosis, or silicosis.  British dictionaries may feel compelled to include antidisestablishmentarianism but many overseas publications do not, on the basis there’s hardly any record of its use except in lists of long words which some editors treat as lexicographical freak shows.  Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary lists the longest as "electroencephalographically", a physician’s diagnostic tool.

English doesn't encourage the conjuring of the long compound words familiar in German.  The classic long German word is Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän (42 letters) meaning "Danube steamship company captain" but there are others, not all of which dictionaries accept.  Betäubungsmittelverschreibungsverordnung (41 letters) means "regulation requiring a prescription for an anaesthetic”; Bezirksschornsteinfegermeister (30 letters) means “head district chimney sweep"; Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften (39 letters) means "legal protection insurance companies".  Enterprising Germans created Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft (80 letters) meaning "association of subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services" but this was judged bogus bogus and rejected the authorities which held the 63-letter Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz ("beef labelling regulation and delegation of supervision law") to be the longest.  It was a real word in actual (if rare) use though usually through the more manageable abbreviation ReÜAÜG but it was rendered obsolete by changes to EU regulations.  Currently, the longest word accepted by most German dictionaries is the 36 letter Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung (automobile liability insurance).

Google ngram (a quantitative and not qualitative measure): Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.  In the matter of antidisestablishmentarianism, the spike in late twentieth century "use" represents the effect of the internet encouraging the creation of many lists and on-line replications of printed material thus the apparent paradox of the appearance of frequent use which actually reflected the existence of many sources explaining why the anyway rare word had become otherwise functionally extinct.

Regarding the substantive matter of disestablishment, it’s a political position developed in nineteenth century Britain in opposition to the Liberal Party’s proposal for the removal of the Anglicans’ status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales.  The establishment was maintained in England, but the Church of Ireland was disestablished in 1871 and the four Church of England dioceses in Wales were disestablished in 1920, becoming the Church in Wales.  Given the nature (and relevance) of the modern Church of England, it’s a matter seldom mentioned as a constitutional reform of pressing importance.