Antidisestablishmentarianism

"Church and state are like light in a prism:
Far more beautiful after the schism.
Some take issue with this,
And support antidis-
establishmentarianism."

— Burma-Shave

"Anti­dis­establish­ment­arian­ism", as a word, technically refers to a specific political movement which would have opposed removing the Church of England from its status as the "official" church of Ireland. (Wikipedia has some information, if you're curious.) A more modern definition is that it refers to the movement to dissolve the legal separation between church and state.^note or sometimes as opposing the removal of the C of E from its status as the official church of England itself. That's what the Burma Shave quote was referring to. This is not about that movement, however. This is about the word.

"Anti-", meaning against, "dis-", meaning to negate, "establishment", a structure, "-arianism", a sect or schism surrounding said establishment. Taken together, it means "A position counter to dismantling the establishment". Since that's a double-negative, it can be generalized even further to simply "pro-establishment".

You see, this infamously long-winded word is more famous for being long, unwieldy, and taking a heck of a long time to type. If anybody needs a go-to big word, this is the one they usually pull out. (Especially if it's at a Spelling Bee.) It's not even the longest word in the English language, though it is the longest one that is neither a scientific term nor specifically coined to make a huge word. Why this word? While it's long, it's really just "establish" with a bunch of fairly standard prefixes and suffixes tacked on. It's not even hard to spell, since it's spelled exactly as it's pronounced, without any of English's 1001 special spelling exceptions or oddities.^note (You might note it still contains two different ways to pronounce the letter "a"; three to pronounce "s", in one of which it is combined with another letter; depending on whether one is speaking British or American, two to three ways to pronounce "i", the third of which is as a diphthong; and two different ways to pronounce "e"; all within the same word. And a couple of the vowel sounds are written with a different letter in different places. But by the standards of English, that's "spelled exactly as it's pronounced", seriously.) Possibly because it's Inherently Funny. A favorite form of Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness. For another gag about long words, see Scary Science Words.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Netflix runs a series of radio ads based on a fictional quiz show with borderline Calvinball-esque Non Sequitur answers. One of the questions is "What word comes next in this sequence? Crustacean, kumquat?" and the answer, of course, is "Antidisestablishmentarianism".

Comic Books

• A Dynomutt story (from Marvel) had the title robot dog going off to investigate a gingerbread man that comes to menacing life:
  Dynomutt: I'll be back before you can say "antidisestablishmentarianism"...provided you can actually say "antidisestablishmentarianism"...

Literature

• J.R. Ward's The Black Dagger Brotherhood series has Rhage use this word whilst describing his attraction to the female protagonist of the second novel.

Live-Action TV

• Blackadder: "I will return before you can say Antidisestablishmentarianism." Since the "you" in question is Prince George, he's right. Although he needs two days.
  Anti-distinctly-minty...
• In an episode of Big Time Rush, during a montage of the boys answering many arbitrary questions, Logan replies solely with the word.
• In an episode of Second Noah, there is a scene where the 2-3 year old Ben wants the twins to let him up into the tree house. All he can say is "Me up!" One of the twins agrees to let him up if he can say "Antidisestablishmentarianism".
• The Honeymooners episode "The $99,000 Answer''
  Alice: Spell "antidisestablishmentarianism".
  Ralph: I'll spell it. [pause] I'll spell it!
  Alice: Well? Go ahead.
  Ralph: [agitated] I'll spell it when you give me $16,000 for spelling it!
  Alice: [disbelieving] Sixteen thousand dollars for spelling it?! I'll give you $32,000 if you can SAY it!
• In a segment on Victorian school punishments in the second Horrible Histories TV series, one boy was being punished for misspelling antidisestablishmentarianism.
• Owned by a student during a spelling bee in Leverage when the grifter of the team was trying to get the student to fail and get the child the team who needed to win win.
• On The Drew Carey Show, Drew asks Mimi to take a letter and begins with this word, followed by "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".
• Classical example in Yes, Prime Minister, in which Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness is a Running Gag. Sir Humphrey tells PM Hacker that a nominee for bishop in the Church of England is a disestablishmentarianist.
  Hacker: What?
• One episode of Walt Disney Presents focused on Donald Duck, including a scene of a psychological examination conducted by Ludwig von Drake. Von Drake starts a word-association exercise with "antidesestablishmentarianism", but can't pronounce it after several tries, and simply rips off the first letter and starts with "A" instead.

Music

• Other than the chorus, the final word in Lemon Demon's Word Disassociation is "Antidisestablishmentarianism."
• Eminem uses this in his song 'Almost Famous' in reference to the word length being similar to how well endowed he is.
• Norwegian folk singer Øystein Sunde has a song called "Overbuljongterningpakkmesterassistent". He did invent the word, but it's a legitimate word according to the rules of the Norwegian language, and means something like "Senior bouillon-cube sorting master's assistant".
• DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's take of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" for the Disneyland 35th Anniversary Celebration has Will Smith mentioning "antidesestablishmentarianism" being a long word that doesn't have the same ring as "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".
• Duke Ellington uses an extended form, "antidisestablishmentarianismist", in the song "You're Just an Old Antidisestablishmentarianismist". However, it appears to mean "one hates love".

News

• An editorial in the Guardian about some aspect of the Church of England, which included the sentence "The case for antidisestablishmentarianism has never been more threadbare." Perfectly appropriate to the context, but you just knew the writer was hugging himself for having managed to get it in.

Radio

• In one podcast on The Ricky Gervais Show [later adapted as part of the animated series], Ricky and Steve ask Karl what book he would choose if he were on "Desert Island Disks", with Karl choosing a dictionary. Karl, Being Karl tries to justify this by saying having a better vocabulary would be helpful when he is rescued.
  Karl: If I sort of say something with a big word that I can't think of right now, they'll go "oh, who's that, he sounds like he knows his stuff".
  Steve [as Karl]: Yoo-hoo! Antidisestablishmentarianism!
  Ricky [as captain of the rescue ship]: Get him on this boat now.

Tabletop Games

• In F.A.T.A.L., there is a chart for intelligence as it applies to languages, including limits on the vocabulary a character is capable of. The highest vocabulary limit is exemplified with "Antidisestablishmentarianism".

Video Games

• In Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People Episode 2: Strong Badia the Free, upon inspecting Strong Bad's large collection of "Edgarware" titles, which includes "anti-virus", "anti-spyware", and "anti-disestablishmentarianism".
• Hellsinker uses Floccinaucinihilipilification as a name for one of its final bosses.
• The brain in Skylanders: Imaginators uses Antidisestablishmentarianism to prove to kaos that he is extremely knowledgeable.

Webcomics

• Suzy Gee from Nukees starts an organization called "Citizens Opposed to Antidisestablishmentarianism." The name can, with some generosity, be said to fit - she's trying to stop a bill that would explicitly tie marriage to religious faith.

Web Original

• One series on AlternateHistory.com (largely a parody of the Pirates of the Caribbean films) featured pirates commanding a ship called the Pseudoantidisestablishmentarian. The logic being that by the time the enemy lookout has finished yelling the ship's name to his captain, they're already halfway through the boarding action.
• Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG tries to use this and another long English word for names.

Web Videos

• In the Daniel Thrasher video "When you have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia", there is a mentioned character named Ann T. Disestablishmentarianism. Also, the T in her name stands for thermoluminescence.

Western Animation

• On Arthur, they had a spelling bee, and The Smart Guy tried to spell this word during a practice session. His dad recommended he skip down to "antidote".
• Showed up in the A Pup Named Scooby-Doo episode "For Letter or Worse". In the beginning of the episode, the designated nerds (the Brainy Bunch) guessed this word from the blanks without even trying to get a letter before guessing. They just learned it was the longest word and said it (possibly not so hard a task given the lack of words of that number of letters in English). Shaggy and Scooby then tried to find the word in a dictionary.
• This also showed up in an Imagine Spot during an episode of Doug. Doug misspells "bologna" in a spelling bee and gets laughed at, while Chalky flawlessly rattles off "antidisestablishmentarianism" and is applauded.
• In Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks, one of Piggley's grandsons tricked the other out of dessert with the riddle "Antidisestablishmentarianism is a long word. Think I can spell it?" He spelled it "I-T".
• Phineas and Ferb: One episode has Major Monogram try to disguise a television transmission meant for Perry the Platypus as a telethon to find the cure for antidisestablishmentarianism. Lawrence is fooled, though he does wonder "I thought it was more an ideological stance than a disease?"
• One of the bumpers of Recess involved Gretchen saying "We'll be back before you can say antidisestablishmentarianism".
• In an early episode of Danny Phantom, "One of a Kind", look closely: the test◊ Danny receives back has "antidisestablishment" as the entire first line.
• The Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? episode "Garage Band" had Robot's friend Mitch try to write "antidisestablishmentarianism" on his guitar after deciding that it's a cool word. He then asks "How do you spell that?" The remainder of the episode shows that he figured out the spelling and finished writing the word.
• Averted in Rocket Power where Twister has to spell "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis".
• Aqua Teen Hunger Force had the character of the Robot Turkey Ghost of Christmas Past From the Future cite "antidisestablishmentarianism" as one of the outcomes of the great chicken uprising lead by Carl.
• In the Robot Chicken episode "President Evil", a teacher had written "ANTIDISE" on the board when she was alerted to a cootie outbreak in her class.
• DuckTales (2017): Huey, Dewey, and Louie use this at one point in "The Beagle Birthday Massacre!". Despite being "unique snowflakes", they momentarily Speak in Unison, causing them to say it in an attempt to stop doing so.
• In the episode "Horse Play" of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, this is one of Raspberry Beret's guesses when Princess Celestia does charades.
• The Teacher's Pet episode "To Bee or Not To Bee" begins with Ian Wazselewski being asked to spell this word and failing spectacularly.
• The Garfield Show special "Rodent Rebellion" had one of the victims of the rats robbing the town being asked what was stolen from her, with one of the objects mentioned being a trophy she earned for spelling "antidisestablishmentarianism" correctly.

Other

• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a similar sort of word.
  • At one time, Disney had sing-a-long videoes put out with intros to each song by Professor Ludwig Van Drake. The cartoon before the sing-a-long to Supercalifragilisticexplialidocious involves a gag about antidisestablishmentarianism not being the word he was thinking of.
  • The Sherman Brothers also came up with "Fundamentalfrienddependability."
• Shows up in Dave Barry's Money Secrets when showing the proper way to write a resume:
  "Results-oriented multitasking hands-on team-building problem-solving take-charge self-starter with enterprise-wide cross-functional productivity-enhancement management-specific capabilities including all phases of conceptualization, implementation, integration, augmentation, allocation, irrigation, fermentation, lactation, plantation, and antidisestablishmentarianism served over field greens with a balsamic vinaigrette."
• In Wales, there is the town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (20 characters long), which was lengthened to Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch in the 1860's which, with 58 characters, is the longest place name in Europe. The sesquipedalian 58-character form means "St. Mary's Church in a hollow of white hazel near the swirling whirlpool of the church of Saint Tysilio with a red cave" in the Welsh language.
• The longest place name in the world is a hill named Taumatawhakatangi­hangakoauauotamatea­turipukakapikimaunga­horonukupokaiwhen­uakitanatahu in New Zealand with 85 characters, which roughly translates as "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one" in the Maori language, with longer variants known as Taumatawhakatangi­hangakoauauotamatea­urehaeaturipukakapikimaunga­horonukupokaiwhen­uakitanatahu (92 characters) and Taumata-whakatangihanga-koauau-o-Tamatea-haumai-tawhiti-ure-haea-turi-pukaka-piki-maunga-horo-nuku-pokai-whenua-ki-tana-tahu (105 characters)^note  The extra-long, rough, and coarse Maori translation of the 105-letter word is "The hill of the nose-flute playing by Tamatea – who was blown hither from afar, had a slit penis, grazed his knees climbing mountains, fell on the earth, and encircled the land – to his beloved one".
• In the United States, the longest place name on record is Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg, which, in Nipmuc Algonquian, roughly translates to "Fishing Place at the Boundaries — Neutral Meeting Grounds" or "lake divided by islands", located near Webster, MA. Locals looking to troll outsiders will say it means "You fish on your side of the lake, we'll fish on our side of the lake, and nobody will fish in the middle".
• The Elizabethan form of this was the Latin word honorificabilitudinitatibus (literally, "to those things in the state of being able to achieve honours.")
• The Dutch variant is Hottentottententententoonstelling, Khoikhoi tents exhibition. It can be expanded to, among others, Hottentottententententoonstellingsterrein (Khoikhoi tents exhibition terrain).
  • It's easy to make large words in Dutch anyway, as most normal words remove spacing if used in an adjective way, so you can just stick words together that have barely any significance to one another. See Fietsventieldopjesfabrieksmedewerkersconventiespreker (Bike Valve Cap Factory Employee Convention Speaker), which are all words separated by spaces in English. Hottentottententententoonstelling is often used in a "she sells sea shells by the shore" way though.
  • Canadian Icelanders in Gimli have their own similar variant - Islendingadagurinn. Germanic languages have a tendency to mash words together, with strange and lengthy results.
• The popular (yet notoriously hard to perform if you don't know German) anecdote written by Polish poet and satirist Julian Tuwim in 30s is centered on building the word "Hottentottenstottertrottelmutterbeutelrattenlattengitterkofferattentäter" ("Assassin of the Khoikhoi mother of the stuttering fool closed in the wicker cage for holding kangaroos").
  • In actual Polish, the go-to words so long it's funny tend to be "konstantynopolitańczykówna" and "konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka", both meaning roughly "the little daughter of a man from Constantinople". The former is proper literary language, the latter is artificially stretched by an excessive use of diminutives.
• In Switzerland, the captain of the company driving steamships on the Vierwaldstättersee (Lake of the four forest counties) is called a Vierwaldstätterseedampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftkapitän. And since German allows you to add any number of nouns to that word, you can extend it to just about any length you like.
• Another popular go-to long word is "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" (a lung disease more commonly known as silicosis) frequently lauded as the longest word in the English language.
• Hungarian has "széttöredezettségmentesítőtleníttethetetlenkedhetnétek" (≈ "you all could perform acts of not being able to be rid of defragmentation tools [which would cause loss of integrity]").
  • Not to mention "megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért" (≈ "for your acts of undefilability").
• The Portuguese equivalent is "Anticonstitucionalissimamente" ("very anticonstitutionally").
  • "Anticonstitutionnellement" is the longest word in French language.
• The way Russian numerals are formed allows for pretty long compound words, like "тысячавосьмисотпятидесятидвухмиллиметровый" (tysachavos'misotpyatidesyatidvukhmillimetrovyi, 1852 millimeters long/wide).
  • This works in other languages too, for example Czech: tisíciosmistypadesátidvoumilimetrový
• There used to be on Wikipedia instructions for adding elements to this word, producing "propseudocontraneoantidisestablishmentarianistically" ("in a manner favouring false opposition to a new form of antidisestablishmentarianism").
• Floccinaucinihilipilification is "the act or habit of calling something worthless". It's actually one letter longer than the Trope Namer.
• Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a coinage that supposedly means "the fear of long words."
• The longest word in the Old Testament in the original Hebrew is וְהָאֲחַשְׁדַּרְפְּנִים (vehaakhshdarpenim, "and the satraps.") While far more modest in length, it’s often used as a nice tidbit of trivia.
• Some people have argued that the longest word in English is the full chemical name of the protein Titin, which is 189, 819 letters. However many linguists have argued that it is actually a verbal formula and thus not a word (it's kind of like renaming the Big Mac Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions–on-a-sesame-seed-bun).
• The Finnish language is well known for almost endless possibilities on combining long compound words, such as Pientalokolmivaihevaihtovirtakilowattituntimittari (Small house three-phase alternative current kilowatt-hour meter) or Lentokonesuihkuturbiiniapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas (Aircraft turbojet engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student). Those are actual, but seldom used, words.
  • In most agglutinative languages, like Finnish, there's no theoretical upper limit to how many words you can put together to form a compound word (in a syntactically and even semantically valid way). Words that are in actual use tend to not be so excessively long, for obvious reasons. Perhaps one of the longest words in actual use, although technical, is "kolmivaihevaihtovirtakilowattituntimittari" (three-phase alternate current kilowatt-hour meter), which you can see in many electricity meters.
• Siimilarly, the officially longest Swedish word is nordvästersjökustartilleriflygspaningssimulatoranläggningsmaterielunderhållsuppföljningssystemdiskussionsinläggsförberedelsearbeten, meaning roughly "the work needed to prepare a statement for a debate on the support system needed for maintenance of airborne reconnaissance simulator equipment for the northwestern coast artillery".
• The go-to longest French word is "anticonstitutionnellement" ("in a way that disrespects the constitution"). It is often used in jokes and media as the very equivalent to the English word this page is about.
  • Since 2017, it has been replaced by "intergouvernementalisations".

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