I recently got the Kino Lorber Blu-ray of Kathleen Collins’ wonderful 1982 film Losing Ground (which, shamefully, didn’t have a theatrical release, and was basically unknown until it was screened at Lincoln Center in 2015), and one of the extra features was Ronald K. Gray’s “celebrated lost student film” Transmagnifican Dambamuality (7 min.). The film was nothing special, but I was struck by the mysterious title, and googling soon turned up this page by Dennis Doros, which explains that Gray’s father had sung a song by that name; Doros provides a clip of Billy Murray singing the song, “Trans-Mag-Ni-Fi-Can-Bam-Dam-U-Ality or (C-A-T Spells ‘Cat’),” and then writes:
But that’s not all! The song goes back to 1909, but the word goes back even farther. Thanks to Dan [Streible], here’s an article showing an appearance of the term dating to at least April 13, 1875, found in the Daily Record of the Times, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania!
The article, under the heading “Phunnygraphs,” begins:
Words for Spelling Bees, both male and female:
Transmagnificanbandanjuality.
(It continues with a labored explanation of how to spell it by breaking it down into syllables; I will note here, for those who didn’t listen to the song, that “Ni-Fi-Can” rhymes with “if I can.”) So it’s yet another example of what I called in 2020 “the rumbustious grandiloquence that has always appealed to the American soul.”
“Ni-Fi-Can” rhymes with “if I can.”
I would have interpreted that as a playful pronunciation of a cromulent word, as opposed to the normative pronunciation of an invented word. Which may have been deliberate metaplayfulness
My mind was suddenly invaded by Wallace Stevens’ “Bantams in Pine-Woods“:
“the rumbustious grandiloquence that has always appealed to the American soul.”
“A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom!”
Only a few phonemes different from “Transmaniacon,” as in https://genius.com/Blue-oyster-cult-transmaniacon-mc-lyrics
Now most would say that the lyricist Sandy Pearlman (1943-2016) was no Wallace Stevens, but if you hypothesize a counterfactual Stevens who spent the dawn of the Seventies moving in dissolute, drugged-up and cynical-yet-hippie-adjacent circles …
“The Anecdote of the Jar” is some kinda psychedelic anthem already, even unaccompanied!
and i could easily see The Emperors of Ice-Cream opening for BÖC.
An obvious addition to the genre(?) which everyone probably already knows :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Also, this, which I had never heard of before last year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisencolinensinainciusol
Video
As seen here in 2018.