Over the Hedge by T Lewis and Michael Fry for September 24, 2018

Howard is Mensa material.

OH Howard the wise, I have a question! Does the light go out when I close the refrigerator door? Signed Loon.

So now I know a word new to me. How the heck does one pronounce that?

The real imbecile is someone who came up with that word.

Owls are actually pretty dim. They’re not even the brightest raptors (that’d be falcons) and raptors are far from the brightest birds (parrots and relatives, and crows and relatives; here’s a video of a tool-making crow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZM9GpLXepU) Owls just look impressive. And, to be fair, they are smarter than pigeons and chickens, though that’s setting the bar pretty low.

Who eats who ? So owls are not that dum :-)

I first learned that word back in the 1970s from a sports anchor at WTOP TV (now WUSA). I’m not positive, but I think it was Glenn Brenner. Anyway, he had it written on a cue card and held it up, saying it was the longest word in the English language. Don’t recall, though, what the occasion was that prompted the brief English tutorial.

Couldn’t you just use “moron detector?”

Howard is a Duck and an Owl.

Latin floccus (“a wisp”) +‎ naucum (“a trifle”) +‎ nihilum (“nothing”) +‎ pilus (“a hair”) + -fication

A jocular coinage, apparently by pupils at Eton College, combining a number of roughly synonymous Latin stems. The word was inspired by a line in the Eton Latin Grammar that gave a rule for certain verbs that take some words irregularly in the genitive case: “Flocci, nauci, nihili, pili, assis, huius, teruncii, his verbis, aestimo, pendo, facio, peculiariter adduntur”.1 This translates loosely to: “The words floccus, naucus, nihilum, pilus, assis (“penny”), hic (“this”) and teruncius (“farthing”) are irregularly used with the genitive case with these verbs: aestimo (“to appraise value”), pendo (“to weigh, to pay”), facio (“to make”)”.

From https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/floccinaucinihilipilification which also has audio clips for both US and UK pronunciation.

@wiatr Click the sound button – https://www.google.com/search?q=floccinaucinihilipilification&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1

I believe this is actually a Bloom County reference from when Steve Dallas tried to give the word to Milo in a spelling contest.

“Species biased based”, the excuse of morons every where.

A new character, huh? Well, unless there was another comic with this guy.

Intelligence does not equate to wisdom.