Floccinaucinihilipilification (pronounced flok-suh-naw-suh-nahy-hil-uh-pil-uh-fi-key-shuhn)
(1) The estimation of something as valueless.
(2) The act or habit of describing or regarding something
as unimportant, of having no value or being worthless.
1735–1745: Apparently a coinage by pupils of Latin at
England’s Eton College (a public (ie private)), the intent jocular but also something
of an exercise in the pleonastic and tautological, the construct built (with
the odd phonetic substitution or insertion) from the Latin words floccus (a wisp) + naucum (a trifle) + nihilum
(nothing) + pilus
(a hair) + -fication. The elements (floccī + naucī + nihilī + pilī) all conveyed the notion “of little or no value, trifling”. The -fication suffix was an alternative
form of -ification, from the Middle English -ificacioun (ending on words generally borrowed whole from Old
French), from the Old French -ification,
from the Latin -ficātiō, a noun
ending which appears on action nouns formed using the suffix -tiō (the English -tion) from verbs
ending in -ficō (English -ify). It was used to convey the idea of “the
process of becoming” and was used in words of French or Latin origin, but in the
last half-century the forms have become highly productive in English and the
choice between -fication & -ification tends to be dictated by the resultant
ease of pronunciation although when applying the suffix -ation to a verb ending
in -ify, -ification is used instead of the expected -ifiation. Modern forms like nerdification (the process
of making or becoming nerdy) and hipsterfication (the process of making or
becoming a hipster or characteristic of hipsters) have proliferated. Floccinaucinihilipilification
is a noun, floccinaucinihilipilificatious is an adjective and floccinaucinihilipilificate,
floccinaucinihilipilificated & floccinaucinihilipilificating are verbs; the
noun plural is floccinaucinihilipilifications (which some deny exists).
Bored or baffled pupils in Latin class presumably coined many fake Latin words and it’s the longest, funniest or most vulgar which tended to survive. At a hefty (by the conventions of English and most languages) 29 letters, floccinaucinihilipilification certainly is long and also enjoys the distinction of being the longest “non-technical” (ie not from medicine, physics etc) word in English although as something used to convey meaning (the very purpose of language), knowing the word does in itself seem floccinaucinihilipilificatious and for those who want more, that adjectival back-formation is lengthier still at a 30 character count. Both trump that other schoolboy favorite antidisestablishmentarianism (opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established (state) church) which manages with 28 and attempts to claim the noun antidisestablishmentarianismist (31) exists have always been dismissed. Etymologists believe the inventive pupils were inspired by a line which appears in various editions of William Lily's (circa 1468–1522) Latin grammars, one of which was the Eton Latin Grammar in which was listed a number of nouns commonly used in the genitive case with some verbs like pendo and facio expressing the idea of evaluating something as worthless.
Floccinaucinihilipilification: Trends of use.
To say the word is rare is stating the obvious but statistically,
use spiked after the spread of the internet and that’s because of all the lists
of long, bizarre or obscure words, Google’s ngrams increasing the count every time
another one was created or shared. 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.
Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.
Despite appearing on all those lists, by the twenty-first
century, actual (ie “real”) use had been so infrequent that to call it “archaic”
was misleading but indisputably it was old and that had much appeal for Sir
Jacob Rees-Mogg (b 1969) an English politician who between 2010-2024 sat in the
House of Commons, rising to become Lord President of the Council and later a
member of cabinet in the memorable administration of Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK
prime-minister 2019-2022). As one who deliberately
affects an archaic style, Sir Jacob’s amused colleagues soon dubbed him “the honourable member for the eighteenth
century” and he made plain his disdain for much of what modernity has
delivered (the EU (European Union), the Labour Party, working class people with
ideas above their station, pop music etc) and in gratitude for his stellar
service, Sir Jacob was created a Knight Bachelor in Mr Johnson’s resignation
honours list (which was as entertaining as any in living memory). Because the Knight Bachelor is the most
ancient of the UK’s many classes of knighthood, that would have pleased him but
it’s also low in the pecking order (the “order of precedence” which dictates
critical things like where one gets to sit (and, more to the point, next to
whom) at certain dinners, church services and such) so that would not. It ranks below all the knighthoods which are
part of the organized orders of chivalry (the Garter, the Thistle, the Bath,
the Star of India et al) and unlike the chivalric orders, does not confer any
entitlement to the use of post-nominal letters, the form “KB” not used (except
in historic reference) after 1815 when knighthoods in the order of the Bath
(1725) were reorganized as Knight Grand Cross (GCB) & Knight Commander
(KCB). Still, he picked up the right to
be styled “the honorable” when his father
(William Rees-Mogg, 1928-2012) was in 1988 created a life peer and when in 2019
he was appointed to the Privy Council, he gained for life the style “The Right Honourable” so there was that.
In 2012, Sir Jacob spoke the word “floccinaucinihilipilification”
in a debate in the House of Commons, his topic being what he asserted was in
the nation a common opinion of the EU and, helpfully, told the house it meant “the habit of regarding something as
worthless”. The 29 letter monster
remains the longest word ever to appear in Hansard (a record of parliamentary
proceedings) although someone did manage to use pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (a
factitious 45 letter creation said to mean “a lung disease caused by inhalation
of very fine silica dust usually found in volcanos”) when appearing before a
select committee (not being on the floor of the house it didn’t make the
Hansard). An opportunist extension of
the medical term pneumonoconiosis, it was coined during the proceedings of the
National Puzzlers' League convention 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, also from the physician’s
diagnostic tool box.
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