antidisestablishmentarianism

From anti- +‎ disestablishmentarian +‎ -ism.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌæn.ti.dɪs.ɪsˌtæb.lɪʃ.mənˈtɛə.ɹi.ənˌɪ.z(ə)m/

• Audio (RP)

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌæn.taɪˌdɪs.ɛsˌtæb.lɪʃ.məntˈɛː.ɹi.ənˌɪ.zm̩/, /ˌæn.ti-/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: an‧ti‧dis‧es‧tab‧lish‧ment‧ar‧i‧an‧ism

antidisestablishmentarianism (usually uncountable, plural antidisestablishmentarianisms)

1. A political philosophy opposed to the separation of a religious group (church) and a government (state), especially the belief held by those in 19th-century England opposed to separating the Anglican church from the civil government or to refer to separation of church and state. [from 20th c.]
   • 1998, University of Oklahoma College of Law, American Indian Law Review:

     Jed Rubenfeld, who actually may not have been recycling a Boerne Court- rejected argument into a law review article,⁴⁵⁰ reasoned that RFRA indeed lacked constitutionality, but because of First Amendment antidisestablishmentarianism, and not the reasons offered by the Court.⁴⁵¹

   • 2002, Angela Hague and David Lavery (credited as editors, but actually authors of the compiled fictional reviews), Teleparody: predicting/preventing the TV discourse of tomorrow:

     The establishmentarianism of Hatch's alliance-building strategy undermined by the disestablishmentarianism of Wiglesworth's treachery triggers an antidisestablishmentarianism in Hawk — but the negation of Wiglesworth's 'dis' coupled with the counter-negation of Hawk's 'anti' does not simply generate a synthetic affirmation of Hatch's 'establishmentarianism'. Instead, Hawk's antidisestablishmentarianism, like a cancerous wart on the end of the nose, is perched at the fuzzy border separating ontology from oncology, malignity from malignancy.

   • 2005 April 9, “Crowning nonsense”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     As we said yesterday, the case for antidisestablishmentarianism has never been more threadbare.

   Antonym: establishmentarianism

Known as a superlatively long word, it is, with 28 letters and 12 syllables, probably the longest non-technical and non-contrived word in English. The jocular term floccinaucinihilipilification is one letter longer.