I love to play with words. Puns are my forte. Spelling is not. I do know that “country” is spelled with a “c” and not a “k”. I also know that “kitchen” is spelled with a “k” and not a “c” despite what some roadside restaurants would have you believe. The problem is I’ve never been good at remembering the rules. It’s like trying to keep up with government regulations. There are just too many and some of them confuse me. I sometimes think they were made to fit the words they describe and not the other way around. Take “i before e except after c”. Why? Would the world be any different if “receive” were spelled “recieve”? I use this as an example because it’s the mistake I make most often when it comes to putting together the alphabet soup that is Meanderings.
I bring this up because Google recently took a look at the most misspelled words in the United States. They made their determination by looking at “how to spell” searches. They took the most common misspelled word by state to tally the final result.
The word misspelled in the most states is “beautiful”. Eleven states weren’t sure how to put that one on paper properly. Other words that made the list in at least two states are: resume, sincerely, canceled, and schedule. I can see how that could be the case given my own proclivity toward mangling the alphabet.
It’s the second commonly misspelled word that got me. Number one in six states: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Are you kidding me? Is that even a real word? How can you officially misspell a word that isn’t even an official word?
My pondering led me to a little research. I went to my go-to source when it comes to straightening out a word: Merriam-Webster. It is there that I found the word in various spellings has existed since it was used by Helen Herman in The Syracuse Daily Orange in 1931. A song by that name was written in the late 40’s. Of course, most folks know the word best from the 1964 movie “Mary Poppins” by the song of the same name using the spelling above.
As to definition, the Merriam-Webster article quotes Herman as saying it includes “all the words in the category of something wonderful”. My generation shortened it to “cool” or for the more verbose “way cool”. “Dude” can also be added to the end of that statement to drive the point home.
Are there different levels of “something wonderful” that don’t warrant the entire word? Say something is above average but doesn’t qualify as “above all”, would that just be “supercalifragilistic”? How do you know when something deserves the tag “expialidocious”? Conversely can something be “expialidocious” or is it a modifier that has to be attached to “supercalifragilistic” to make sense? It doesn’t matter as I won’t likely remember the rule if indeed it does exist.
Okay, since it appears in Merriam-Webster’s cavalcade of words (and Oxford’s as well) I agree that it has become a real word. Pop culture wins again. But the bigger question is who is using supercalifragilisticexpialidocious so often that they have to Google it? Looking at the Goggle map showing the most misspelled words in each state, I realize I may be insulting you. Georgia was among those six states that asked the question.
Again I ask why? It’s not the sort of word you use in every day speech. I seriously doubt it was used in a Tweet. You only get 280 characters and supercalifragilisticexpialidocious takes 35 of them. Pair that with “hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia” and you’d just about be out of letters. You would also have one odd Tweet.
“Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is not a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious thing if you have to work with big words. :) #afraidofbigwords”
Back to the Goggle word map for a moment. I noticed the most Googled word for spelling in my namesake state, Maine, is Connecticut. I guess folks were looking to relocate. If that’s the case, then they should choose Georgia. It’s easier to spell and is truly supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Hmmmm….maybe it was members of the Georgia General Assembly who were looking up the word thinking it might look good on a license plate as our next state slogan.
Georgia…the Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious State.
