Floccinaucinihilipilification

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Floccinaucinihilipilification listen (help·info) (American English: listen (help·info)) is "the act or habit of estimating or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation".

With 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, adding compound suffixes -i-, and -fication (as in e.g. glor-i-fication, from facio, "to make or do")

floccus, -i a wisp or piece of wool, used idiomatically as flocci non facio ("I don't give a hoot")
naucum, -i a trifle
nihil, -is 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." When the common English nominal suffix -ness is then added to the above adjective, a thirty-four letter noun floccinaucinihilipilificatiousness is formed, which means "smallness" or "insignificance."

1 Pronunciation
2 Noted occurrences
3 External links
4 See also

[edit] Pronunciation

A number of pronunciations have been suggested for this word, including the following (shown in IPA):

/ˌflɒ.kɪˌnɒ.kɪˌnɪ.hɪ.lɪˌpɪ.lɪ.fɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/
/ˌflɒ.ksɪˌnɔːsɪˌnaɪ.ɪl.ɪˌpɪl.ɪf.ɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/
/ˌflɒ.ksɪˌnaʊ.sɪ.nɪ.hɪ.lɪ.pɪ.lɪ.fɪ.keɪ.ʃən/
/ˌflɑ.tʃi.ˌnaʊ.tʃi.nɪˌhɪ.liˌpɪ.li.faɪ'kæ.ʃən/
/ˌflɑ.sɪˌnɑ.si.nə.hɪl.ə.pɪl.ə.fɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/
/ˌflɒk.siˌnoʊ.siˌnaɪ.hil.i.ˌpɪl.i.fɪ.keɪ.ʃən/
/ˌflɒ.sɪˌnɑʊ.sɪ.nɪ.hɪ.lɪ.pɪ.lɪ.fɪ.keɪ.ʃən/

[edit] Noted occurrences

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Floccinaucinihilipilification

The word was used in a commercial for Geico insurance. A judge struggles to pronounce the word for a child to spell in a spelling bee. [1]
Jo Brand on QI, episode 2x05 (aired 5 November 2004), in the process of guessing a word invented by Thomas Edison:

Alan Davies: Crikey.

Stephen Fry: No, not crikey.

Jo Brand: Floccinaucinihilipilification.

Stephen Fry: He didn't invent that word, but well done for knowing it. Which means— ?

Jo Brand: The act of assessing something as worthless.

Stephen Fry: Very correct.

The word appeared in a Double Jeopardy! Round REALLY LONG WORDS clue in game #4962 of Jeopardy!, aired 2006-03-21. Alex Trebek humorously gave up trying to pronounce the word while reading the clue. [2]
Episode 14 of The Brak Show featured the word. After a thorough freestyle hip-hop trouncing from a record store clerk stemming from a disagreement over his chances at an upcoming rap contest, Brak defiantly announced that loser was not in his vocabulary—but neither was floccinaucinihilipilification.
U.S. Senators Robert Byrd and Daniel Patrick Moynihan discussed the word on the Senate floor on June 17, 1991. [3] Senator Byrd noted that he had used the word two or three years earlier on the Senate floor. Senator Moynihan was attempting to establish the longer variant: floccinaucinihilipilificationism.
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.
Mike McCurry, Bill Clinton's press secretary, used the word in a 1995 press briefing.[4]
Used in the BBC quiz show Catchword as the player using the longest word in some rounds got a bonus.
Title of a 1996 recording from the Chicago-area noise music group Panicsville released on Nihilist Records.
On episode #6 of the first season of the Nickelodeon show, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Ned Bigby was knocked out of James K. Polk's annual spelling bee because of this word.
Robert A. Heinlein used it -- at least -- twice; once in The Puppet Masters, and once in The Number of the Beast, where Capt. Z. John Carter used the feminine genitive form of floccinaucinihilipilificatrix when referring to his mother-in-law, Hilda Mae Burroughs.
Adam Spencer's Book of Numbers gives an example of how to use floccinaucinihilipilification in context:
- Fred: Hey Bill, have you heard the new Celine Dion album?
- Bill: It's absolute crap!
- Fred: Well, there's no need for floccinaucinihilipilification.
In her book The Way They Learn, Cynthia Tobias uses floccipaucinilihilipilification as an example of how a person learns to remember, spell, and pronounce words through their learning style (auditory, visual, or kinesthetic.)