I’m going to talk to you about words, but I don’t want to drumble. Not familiar with drumble? (Neither is my writing program, because that word was underlined in red as soon as I typed it.) It’s a new verb meaning to drone, blather, or ramble on, and it was one of the more than 500 words and phrases added to the Oxford English Dictionary in June of this year. Each quarter, the OED is updated to include revised versions of current entries as well as new listings from A to Z. We like to think of all of these additions as original to the times, but some of the words we’re using today have a long-standing history.

photo by mrpolyonymous via Wikimedia Commons

For example, the recent dance move known as twerking claims its origins from the 1990s dance clubs of New Orleans, but it was actually used as a noun over 170 years ago in a letter written by Charles Clairmont (author Mary Shelley’s stepbrother): ‘Really the Germans do allow themselves such twists & twirks of the pen, that it would puzzle any one.’

Or how about choss, a specialized vocabulary word used by rock climbers and mountaineers to mean a friable, crumbly, or loose rock, typically considered unsafe or unpleasant to climb? The OED’s first citation of this word is from a letter written by Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, in 1937: “The excellent word our family used to denote the condition of our house when painters, paperers, and upholsterers were ravaging it—’choss’. We have been in a state of choss for some time, and the smell of newly painted woodwork was so bad that it gave both of us colds and bronchial coughs.”

Other trendy words added last month include crowdfund, declutter, freegan, hot mess, meh, photo bomb, retweet, SCOTUS, totes (as in totally), webisode and yarnbomb. The complete list of additions can be found at Oxford English Dictionary.

Move over, Mary Poppins, there’s a new tongue twister in town.

Sing this one out loud, sisters:

Jean-Étienne Liotard, Young Girl Singing into a Mirror, 1700s

Floccinaucinihilipilification!

(Need a spoonful of sugar?)

Unlike supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, floccinaucinihilipilification is a real (read: definitively definable) word. Saying it, however, is a challenge best broken into syllables.

Take a big breath and say it with me:

Flok

Suh

Naw

Suh

Nahy

Hil

Uh

Pil

Uh

Fi

KAY

Shuhn

Whew!

This rarely uttered Latin-based noun refers to an inherent lack of value. Something like, “The painting was forged by a copycat artist, so it was dismissed by the Antiques Roadshow as a floccinaucinihilipilification.”

But, the term’s primary claim to fame is its length—another one of the longest words in the English language.

Feeling pretty good about your pronunciation of floccinaucinihilipilification?

Try putting it to music.

This post is extremely hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian. (In other words, it’s all about really, really long words.)

So what’s the longest word in the English language?

Is it supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? (34 letters) Well, no. This word—meaning extraordinarily good or wonderful—was actually made up by brothers Richard and Robert Sherman, co-writers of songs for the musical Mary Poppins in 1964. The brothers pulled the word from their memories of creating double-talk words in their childhood. Due to the popularity of the movie and its songs, the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1986.

Mary Poppins via Wikimedia Commons

The current longest word in any major English dictionary is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis (45 letters). Pneumonia? Microscopic? Volcanoes? Well, pretty much. It’s a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano.

But if you’re looking for truly hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian words, here’s one that’s bound to astound:

methionylthreonylthreonyglutaminylarginyl…isoleucine

“51 letters!” you exclaim. Not so fast. You know those three little dots called ellipses? Well, we know they represent some kind of omission, in this case, 189,768 more letters! Yep, this word, the chemical name for the human protein titin (a very short word for the largest known protein), is a total of 189,819 letters, and takes about three-and-a-half hours to pronounce!

You look simply frabjous today, darling!

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Uh-oh.

Now I’ve done it.

I’ve put you in one of those awkward positions,

like when someone has a scrap of spinach in her teeth,

and you can’t quite decide if it’s your place to point it out.

Don’t worry, I know what you want to say, and I can take it.

You think I misspelled “fabulous,”

made a mess of it,

a mockery

(all modesty aside).

Alas, my dear, I haven’t sworn off spellcheck.

In fact, I didn’t actually misspell the word “frabjous.”

Well, not exactly.

According to Dictionary.com (which cites Lewis Carroll’s kooky 1871 classic, Through the Looking-Glass),

frabjous \FRAB-juhs\

is an informal adjective meaning wonderful, elegant, superb.

See?

Frabjous is a perfect fit for you!

Pretty girl posed with camera, circa 1909, Library of Congress.

Here’s a brain teaser for you …

What’s the only word in the English language containing three Ys?

Yeppers, I said three … count ’em, THREE.

Even if you’re an ace Scrabble player, you probably haven’t come across this word … because Scrabble only has 2 Ys to work with. And a good thing that is, because this word also contains a Z.

Well, the word with 3 Ys also describes a rare astronomical event involving three heavenly bodies …

Syzygy [siz-i-jee]: the alignment of three celestial bodies in a straight line, the Sun, the Earth, and either the Moon or a planet.

Three Planets Dance Over La Silla.
Photo by Beletsky via Wikimedia Commons.

Lunar and solar eclipses are both examples of syzygy, when the Earth, Sun, and Moon fall in a straight line. Check out this video from One Minute Astronomer showing a dramatic example of syzygy when the Moon passes between the Earth and Sun in a total solar eclipse.

The other day, I was talking to my granddaughter, Stella, and I said something about “cutting the mustard.”

She stopped me mid-sentence.

“What does that mean, Nanny? Cutting the mustard?”

(Picture me scratching my head.)

Cut the mustard?

What a funny saying.

This mustard?

Photo by Petr Pakandl via Wikimedia Commons

That mustard?

Creole mustard, photo by Mwaters1120 via Wikipedia

Hmmm …

I told Stella that the saying means, basically, “to be good enough, to do the job well.”

But I also told her I’d investigate the origins of “cutting the mustard,” be it wild-growing or a zesty spread.

What I found was a series of suppositions:

1. Both mustard plants and their seeds are tough to cut, making success a high bar.

“When mustard was one of the main crops in East Anglia, it was cut by hand with scythes, in the same way as corn,” explains Phil Pegum in The Guardian. “The crop could grow up to six feet high, and this was very arduous work, requiring extremely sharp tools. When blunt, they would not cut the mustard.”

2. Culinary mustard is often cut (diluted) with vinegar to make it more palatable, which, one might presume, indicates a job well done.

3. “Another supposed explanation,” proposes Gary Martin of The Phrase Finder, “is that the phrase is simply a mistaken version of the military expression ‘cut the muster’. This appears believable at first sight. A little research shows it not to be so. Muster is the calling together of soldiers, sailors, prisoners, to parade for inspection or exercise. To cut muster would be a breach of discipline; hardly a phrase that would have been adopted with the meaning of success or excellence.” Well, now we can check that one off the list.

“Whatever the coinage, the phrase itself emerged in the United States towards the end of the 19th century,” Martin continues. “The earliest example in print that I’ve found is from the Kansas newspaper The Ottawa Herald, August, 1889.”

The quote read:

He tried to run the post office business under Cleveland’s administration, but couldn’t “cut the mustard”.

Martin surmises that the use of quotation marks in the clip implies that the saying was familiar to readers and already used in common speech.

While my findings may not exactly cut the mustard, I hope they at least pass muster.

Stella will be the judge.

Here’s a little teaser for you …

What’s the only word in the English language to sound exactly the same when you remove four of its five letters?

Here are some visual hints …

National Woman’s Party members with banners during the dedication ceremonies for the Alva E. Belmont House, 1922 via Wikimedia Commons.

Lined up in Latvia. Photo by russavia via Wikimedia Commons.

Photo of tourists in Jerusalem by Dan Lundberg via Wikimedia Commons.

What do these people all have in common?

They’re waiting …

in a line …

or a …

queue (a line of people waiting). Pronunciation: Q!

“Have you heard the latest goodies from the grapevine?” Jane teased with a twinkle in her eye.

Young Woman with Hat and Grapes by Pierre van Hanselaere, 1820, via Wikimedia Commons

Sally shrugged.

Yolanda yawned.

But Nosy Nellie just had to know. She sidled up to Jane with her ears practically pleading. She couldn’t wait to gather the gossip and nosh on the natter …

Quiz:

Knowing what you now know about natter-noshing Nosy Nellie, you might refer to her as which of the following?

1. A zymurgist
2. A shadcan
3. A quidnunc

Sufficiently stumped?

Well, while Nosy Nellie may, indeed, study fermentation in the processes of brewing and distillation (zymurgist) or perform matchmaking in the old Hebrew style (shadcan), the most apropos label for the lady in this situation would be “quidnunc,” someone who is eager to know the latest news and gossip; a busybody.