Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
song from the film and musical Mary Poppins
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" ( ) is a song and single from the 1964 Disney musical film Mary Poppins. It was written by the Sherman Brothers, and sung by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. It also appears in the 2004 stage show version.
Because Mary Poppins was a period piece set in 1910, songs that sounded similar to songs of the period were wanted. The movie version finished at #36 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
Story context
The song occurs in the chalk-drawing outing animated sequence, just after Mary Poppins wins a horse race. Flush with her victory, she is immediately surrounded by reporters who pepper her with questions and suggest that she is at a loss for words. Mary disagrees, saying that at least one word is appropriate for the situation, and begins the song with this very word.
Word meaning and general origin
The word is a compound word, and said by Richard Lederer in his book Crazy English to be made up of these words: super- (above), -cali- (beauty), -fragilistic- (delicate), -expiali- (to atone), and -docious (educable), with all of these parts combined meaning "atoning for being educable through delicate beauty".
The Oxford English Dictionary first records the word (with a spelling of "supercaliflawjalisticexpialadoshus") in the column titled "A-muse-ings" by Helen Herman in the Syracuse University Daily Orange, dated March 10, 1931.
The public source identifies “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” as song from the film and musical Mary Poppins. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, song and film.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q103. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 2004, 1910 and 1931.
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This entry incorporates text from “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.