About The Double-Daring Book for Girls

The longest made up words in the dictionary

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters)
This word, meaning “a lung disease caused by the inhalation of silica dust,” was coined in 1935 by Everett Smith, then-president of the National Puzzlers’ League, specifically for the purpose of becoming the longest word in any English dictionary.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (34 letters)
This famous word comes from the song of the same title in the 1964 Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins. It’s essentially a nonsensical word whose purported use is to make a speaker sound “precocious” when she uses it. (Believe it or not, there was an earlier claim to this word: In 1951, Alan Holmes  and His New Tones recorded a song written by Patricia Smith and Don Fenton called “Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus,” also known as “The Super Song.” Disney was sued by the writers, but Disney won, and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is the song—and the word—we know today.)