Now that’s a mouthful, actually it REALLY IS a mouthful. For a while it was considered the longest English word, displacing antidisestablishmentarianism, but was then toppled by pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Granted it was a contrived word to beat it’s predecessor, but so was it’s successor.

So what does floccinaucinihilipilification mean? and when was it first used?

It means an act or instance of judging something to be trifling, worthless or trivial. It was first used in a letter in 1741 and misspelled at that (at least according to the Oxford dictionary). Now that’s a feat. Misspelling a word that you coined. Not many could so that!

Etymology: Flocci is the plural of floccus “a tuft of wool”, pili, the plural of pilus “a hair”, nihili is from nihil “nothing,” while nauci is a word meaning “worthless”. Together they make no sense at all but the word reflects our love of things of record size which ultimately led to the Guinness Book of Records and the silliness it still produces.

Evidently Robert Heinlein used the feminine noun construction of the word in a novel: floccinaucinihilipilificatrix.

Lest I forget what I learned in high school, it is time to work on pronunciation and usage. It is said flok-suh-naw-suh-nahy-hil-uh-pil-uh-fi-key-shuhn, and here’s my sentence: