Antidisestablishmentarianism. (BSDA #7)

Today in my sociology class a guy known only to the world as Fonzie, for reasons very complicated to explain to anyone who doesn't know him, randomly shouted out the world antidisestablishmentarianism during a game of Pictionary. I can't really remember why - and often with him one simply cannot understand, one can only accept - but it was nonetheless hilarious and, more importantly, gave me something to talk about here. Since no-one I have ever met, seemingly, seems to understand what it means, I would like to attempt to define the word antidisestablishmentarianism now. Because it is an agglutinative construction, built from adding prefixes and suffixes onto an original verb, it can easily be broken down to aid understanding. GO.

Begin with establish, a word everyone knows, meaning to begin or create something.

Add -ment to create establishment, a word used to describe the act of setting something up, or the thing that has been created, or, in this specific case, the concept of having a state religion which is tied to the national government of a country.

Add dis- for disestablishment, the idea of, in this case, removing the legal connections between religion and government - something which happened in Ireland in 1871 and in Wales in 1920 but has still not happened in England.

And anti- to create antidisestablishment, the word for opposition to disestablishment.

Add -ary to create antidisestablishmentary, which means of or pertaining to antidisestablishment.

Add -an (and change the spelling slightly) for antidisestablishmentarian, or one is an opponent of disestablishment. Now to finish the pudding...

Add -ism to end your word. You now have antidisestablishmentarianism, which clearly means, as this staged procedure has shown, the movement or ideology of opposition to disestablishment.

There. That wasn't so hard, right? (Many people within this movement are hard-right, however.*)

I think I should finish this blog now, because I have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.**

*That was a very little pun.
** And that a very little joke.

Follow this blog for more pathetic jokes and pointless stuff you could have found out on Wikipedia. I will not see you and you will not see me, but you will read me (maybe) next time on antmoorfield takes on the world. Goodbye.