Word of the Week

Floccinaucinihilipilification

This week’s word of the week is a rather grand little (or should I say grand long) word - floccinaucinihilipilification, which is the action or habit of describing something as useless, unimportant or worthless.

The word originated in the mid 18^th Century, being popular with Eton pupils and included in the Eton Latin Grammar. The origin of the word can be traced to four Latin words; flocci, nauci, nihili and pili, all suggesting “at a small price,” “for nothing,” “trifling” or “something insignificant”.  

Today, floccinaucinihilipilification is rarely used as it was designed. If you ever hear it in a sentence it is far more likely to be in an argument about the longest word in the dictionary rather than referring to something as useless!  Just for information, for all you who thought antidisestablishmentarianism was the longest word in the English language, with twenty eight letters, floccinaucinihilipilification beats it coming in with twenty nine!  Some may indeed argue that this is the longest non- technical word to be found in an English dictionary.     

As we have said floccinaucinihilipilification is almost always used as being an example of a long word, however we can find historical evidence of its correct usage. The word is first recorded in 1741, in a letter of William Shenstone, an 18^th Century poet and landscape gardener. Again in the early 19^th Century it appears in records from Sir Walter Scott and the poet Robert Southey.  More recently the word was used by the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, firstly in Parliament when discussing alleged corruption among judges in the European Court of Justice, and again when interviewed by Andrew Neil in February 2012.  Really he did, and I can provide empirical evidence with this little clip from youtube.com!

 

Okay, so a lot of us have probably learned a new word today.  Perhaps, not a word that is used in everyday language by everyday people, but as we have seen it is still a word that is used by at least one MP! If you want to amaze your friends and family try working floccinaucinihilipilification into a conversation.  For those of you who are willing to give it a go, the pronunciation is FLOK-si-NO-si-NY-HIL-i-PIL-i-fi-KAY-shuhn, but be warned, you do run the risk of people thinking you swallowed a dictionary for breakfast or have been eating too much alphabetti spaghetti – lol! 

         

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