Antidisestablishmentarianism

Arms of the See of Canterbury, governing the Church of England, mother of the Anglican Communion.

Antidisestablishmentarianism (listen to , ) is a political position that originated in 19th-century Britain in opposition to proposals for the disestablishment of the Church of England, that is, to remove the Anglican Church's status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales. The word was used in 1838 in Church and State by William Gladstone, under whose administration the Irish Church Act 1869 was passed.

The establishment was maintained in England, but in Ireland the Church of Ireland (Anglican) was disestablished in 1871. In Wales, four Church of England dioceses were disestablished in 1920, subsequently becoming the Church in Wales.

The question of disestablishment of the Church of England is still current, often tied with the position of the English monarch as "Supreme Governor" of the Church (see Act of Settlement 1701). Those who wish to continue the establishment of the Church of England are referred to as Antidisestablishmentarians.

Word length

The word is often referenced in English-speaking popular culture on account of its unusual length of 28 letters and 12 syllables. It is one of the longest words in the Oxford English Dictionary. It is commonly believed to be the one of the longest words in English, excluding coined and technical terms not found in major dictionaries. A slightly longer but less commonly accepted variant of the word can be found in the Duke Ellington song "You're Just an Old Antidisestablishmentarianismist".

J.E. Littlewood pointed out that the word is all "form" apart from the Latin stem st.

See also

• Antiestablishmentarianism
• Longest word in English

References

• Adrian Hastings, Church and state : the English experience (Exeter : University of Exeter Press, 1991.)
• Antidisestablishmentarianism in the Online Etymology Dictionary
• Antidisestablishmentarianismist in the Urban Dictionary