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.
Can food get TOO cheap?
Unfortunately, the answer is yes.
While we might all like a bargain at the checkout, remember that behind all food, there is a farmer, and that farmer needs to make a living.
In Belgium, farmers recently took to the streets to protest low prices for milk, pork, and more. A convoy of hundreds of tractors blocked a major highway while famers burned piles of tires to bring awareness to their plight. Belgian famers are paid about 26 euro cents per liter of milk, but need 35–40 cents to just break even. Many farmers say low prices are pushing them to the edge of bankruptcy.
photo © EPA
Protesting is nothing new to Belgian farmers; in 2009, dairy farmers sprayed nearly 800,000 gallons of fresh milk onto their fields in protest of low milk prices, and in 2012, thousands of angry farmers on hundreds of tractors sprayed fresh milk on the European Parliament in Brussels during two days of demonstrations.
Just last year, the European Union lifted a milk quota that had been in place for more than 30 years, allowing cheap surplus milk to flood the market. That, and a Russian food embargo banning imports of crops that had been shipped there for years caused a lopsided market, where demand is now smaller than supply. Farmers’ losses are estimated to be as high as 5.5 billion euros.
What to do? Belgian farmers have launched a national fair trade label they hope will help. Six other countries in the EU currently have fair trade guidelines that help farmers get a fair share of the profits. Similar protests in France recently led to an emergency government aid package worth 600 million euros in tax relief and loan guarantees. Belgian farmers are hoping for something similar. On September 7, European agriculture ministers are scheduled to meet in Brussels to address the problems.
We sold our house!
We are so excited to be moving across town to something closer to the schools and parks and downtown. We’ve been boxing it all up.
And we’ve never had such a big truck in our driveway before.
On to our next chapter!
If you’re a city gal who’s always dreamed of owning a farm, you might like a new HGTV series called Farmhouse Life. Based on the model of the popular House Hunters series, Farmhouse Life follows potential buyers as they tour farm properties to buy around the U.S.
Historians in period dress at the Hillsman Farm House Museum, Virginia State Parks via Wikimedia Commons
“Families wishing for wide-open spaces head to the great outdoors to search for the luxury farmhouse of their dreams,” says HGTV’s website. “From hundreds of sprawling acres to classic, quaint country living, follow along as they look for the perfect homestead and discover some of the most affordable and beautiful locations, proving you don’t have to be a millionaire to live a Farmhouse Life.”
Spark your dreams of owning a farm Monday nights on HGTV.
Farmstead, East Earl Township, Lancaster County. by Nicholas via Wikimedia Commons
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!
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
