Antidisestablishmentarianism

Since my arrival in Russia, my work schedule has been catch as catch can. The end of May traditionally marks the beginning of the slow period for the EFL industry in Russia--the Russians being loath to waste any of their short summer on English lessons--and my school has not had much for me to do. I surmise that I might have been busier had I arrived in March as planed, and that it may be some time before my schedule settles.

My first week of teaching, I was covering for a teacher who is temporarily stuck in England because of visa problems. This week, I have been filling in for a different teacher who is ill. And so the opportunity arose to introduce some Russians to antidisestablishmentarianism--the word, not the concept.

Antidisestablishmentarianism came up in the midst of a lesson about prefixes and suffixes. I had a group of upper-intermediate students who are at a stage of their English education where they are able to start learning the rules of word formation in English. And so I allowed antidisestablishmentarianism to expand, bit by bit, across the board, so that my students could see how far prefixes and suffixes could enable a word to stretch.

Like all EFL students, the students to whom I taught this (in)famous English word are keen on electronic dictionaries. Once antidisestablishmentarianism had spread itself across a whole blackboard, one of my students looked it up--to my relief, as I felt unequal to the task of explaining, in a way non-native speakers could understand, that the word refers to opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England. I was, however, astounded to discover that at least one Russian-English dictionary contains this word, as I imagine its utility to a Russian must be next to nil.

For that matter, the utility of this word to a native speaker of English is not much higher. This must be the only word in the language that it discusssed, analyzed, and mocked more than it is used in real speech or writing to convey its actual meaning. While I am not a historian of the Church of England, I can say that I cannot recall one instance, in 27 years of speaking and writing the English language, when I saw antidisestablishmentarianism used in a purposive way, to convey its dictionary definition. When one actually needs to refer to opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England, saying "opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England" is far more likely to get one's point across than using antidisestablishmentarianism.

Popular myth to the contrary, antidisestablishmentarianism is not the longest word in the English language. That honor goes, no doubt, to some obscure word used only among scientists. But I hazard a guess that it is the longest word known to educated speakers of English regardless of their profession.

So what purpose does antidisestablishmentarianism serve in English, that senisble Anglophones continue to teach the word to their children? I gather its purpose is sociological rather than lexical. By knowing this word, we get to be in on the joke, able to differentiate ourselves from uneducated people who have never encountered the word, and from foreigners who do not possess the word.

Nonetheless, I let my students in on the joke, telling them how impressed "real" Americans and Englishment would be that they knew this word. They gave me a puzzld look.

"When would I ever use this word?" one of them asked me. I knew the rest of the class was thinking the same thing.

"Why, when you need to prove you know what antidisestablishmentarianism means!" I felt like replying.

But I knew somehow it wouldn't translate.