text:
Talk:Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Pronunciation
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis It is the longest word in english dictionary which has 45 letters.

audio
The sound file "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" pronounced the word's ending kon-nahy-oh-sis. I was wondering if I'd been pronouncing it wrong all these years (or at least thinking about it wrong), but I looked it up, and it's supposed to be koh-nee-oh-sis, according to Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary. It's a minor point, but since it's explaining how to pronounce the long word, it might as well be correct. I have no complaints about the rest of his pronunciation, just the ending.-- Kevin (talk) 20:25, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Better sound file
I have created and uploaded a better soundfile, without slowdown on certain syllables (uploaded to ) AledJames 18:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Microsoft Word
On microsoft word the spell check says that it is spelt pneumonoultamicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis it puts a k on the coniosis part instead of c. Which one is correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.115.140.115 (talk) 15:12, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

UMWA
would the UMWA's use of the word at http://www.umwa.org/blacklung/blacklung.shtml be sufficient citation?

 * One citation is not enough, otherwise many of James Joyce's coinages would be words. Canon 01:54, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Here's a second citation, and it's even from a medical source: http://www.pathology.med.ohio-state.edu/pews/glossary/DisplayGlossaryImage.aspx?Keyword=PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS

 * I agree that this evidence starts to add up to a case for the word. At this point I'd refer it to the dictionary editors who have dropped the word from their latest editions for reappraisal.  Perhaps the word has entered the language as a synonym for "black lung disease," which is not the original meaning, by the way.  If so, the route it took is rather twisted, starting as a hoax, passing through the dictionaries, and ending up in the medical literature.  Many words get into English in odd ways, so oddness of etymology is not a conclusive criterion for exclusion.  The word has been dropped from dictionaries since the 1970s; let's see if it shows up again in the future. Canon 04:40, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

According to http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, it's still in the 2002 edition of the merriam webster medical dictionary, and definied as "a pneumoconiosis caused by inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust," which is decently close to it's original meaning. Some indication in the article might be appropriate.

According to http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19980916, it's also still in the random house dictionary of the english language, albeit marked as a fictitious word.

As I've dug up two innocuous non-dictionary uses of this word, I am editing the page to reflect.

TDOE
It is the longest word ever to appear in 'the English Dictionary'. Is that a real book? or just bad grammar? If it exists, it should have a link. jazzle 10:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC) The word is a lung disease, you get from breathing in volcanic ash. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:901:4400:FA40:D900:60A5:75FA:1B3B (talk) 13:27, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Quotation and citation changes
I changed the interior of the quotes slightly, to better reflect the original sources. For example, Word Play's version of the New York Herald quote uses 103d, not 103rd; those sorts of things shouldn't be changed from within the quote, even if they conflict with normal Wikipedia style guidelines. I also extended the quote from the 1999 OED, and added a more detailed citation (I subscribe to OED online); the quote could be re-shortened if it used "...." at the end, but shouldn't insert a period mid-sentence. I put a 2006 draft OED definition in the same footnote; that could be moved to the lead of the article, to replace the 1999 definition, if people think that would be a better approach. -Agyle 08:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Smith credit is theory not fact
I changed the wording from "Word Ways...revealed in several articles that the word was invented in 1935 by Everett M. Smith..." to "Word Ways...suggests the word was...." My wording might be improved, but my intention was to indicate that Word Ways didn't state for a fact that Smith invented the word, it suggested that he may have ("...it appears that Smith..."). OED online's current definition also seems to share this view, saying it was invented "...(prob. by Everett M. Smith....)" -Agyle 08:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Theory or fact
My edits that Everett Smith's creation of the word is a theory and not a fact were reverted. I agree that this is very likely what happened, but I know of no documented or published reference to support this claim. The reference cited in this article states "However, it appears that Smith did not cite the word, he coined it" after presenting evidence to support just that. Regardless of the probability involved, I was under the impression that if there are no references stating this, then it is not Wikipedia's job to do so. Macduff (talk) 19:05, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The more up-to-date reference that removes the provisional language of the earlier article has been added. Canon (talk) 20:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The Word's History
Thanks very much. My other concern is - when did it become general knowledge that the word had this origin? Chris Cole's original article was published in 1989. Is the OED definition that states the word is "facticious" only in post-1989 editions, or is that definition as quoted in the first paragraph of this article also in the 1936 edition? If there is no reference to this that existed pre-1989, I think it worth mentioning that older dictionary entries (and thus the general public) bought into it.Macduff (talk) 21:09, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The skeptical OED definition predates the 1989 article, but someone will have to do some sleuthing to find out if the wording changed after 1936. Canon (talk) 21:20, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Would it be invented anyway
Humans seem to have a need for this kind of stuff. If pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis wasn't created in the early 20th century then the need for these superlative indications would probably make certain people and enthusiasts to invent some "longest word in the English language". Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis fits the bill perfectly. Most people who realise its length don't even know its meaning!

Long Word!
The name of this specific disease was solely created to be the longest word in the English dictionary. I think that this is just a bad idea. New disease = New longest word in the English dictionary.

Thank you for reading. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Veto Lad (talk • contribs) 17:11, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Critics
Critics have complained that this word is a technical term (specifically, a medical term), and hence not worthy of consideration as the "longest word in general usage".

critics? of what?! 03:03, May 30, 2004 User:Resister (attrib by Ben Brockert)
 * of the suggestion that it's the longest word. jazzle 10:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

But it is totally valid
If the word was suggested to at some point be used by the medical profession and, eventually, was adopted by said profession as a word which describes a condition then that only makes the proposal of the word prophetic and not a hoax.

Therefore, while the etymology of the word did not stem from the medical community it was none the less adopted by the medical community and therefore is a completely acceptable word.

Thus I declare the assumption that this word is a hoax to be fallacious.
 * Valid argument based on incorrect assumptions. Pneumoconiosis is the word used by medical journals and dictionaries. Will Spiller 203.59.123.73 07:07, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Will you are wrong. Try Miriam Websters online medical dictionary - and there it is.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.92.230.173 (talk) 19:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Hoax
The above statement by an anonymous editor that the word has been adopted by the medical community requires some evidence to be believed. Unless some such evidence is forthcoming, the statement in the main article that "some people" disagree that the word is a hoax should be removed as it violates Wikipedia standards for accuracy. Canon 01:57, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

 * Since no one has come forward with evidence of medical usage, I will remove the statement from the main article. Canon 22:33, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

 * That seems correct. OED's Sept 2006 draft update, which I added as a footnote, changed from "occurring chiefly" to "occurring only as an instance of a very long word." A current search of scholar.google.com supports this; it does appear in medical journals, but only to discuss the word itself, not used to describe a condition. -Agyle 07:44, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Regardless if it was a hoax or not, the word is used and appears in several dictionaries. In short, its a valid word. It may have been a hoax or it may not have been, but a new word was "born" either way.

National standards?
I've removed the claim that the word is used by "brainy children" which allows it to meet "national standards," since the first of these terms is pejorative and no source is provided for the second claim. Also, in order to establish that this is a word, an "innocent" citation must be found, which is a citation in which it is used in a medical context independent of its wordplay characteristics. Canon 20:43, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

No idea why "brainy" should be thought pejorative. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.248.248.215 (talk) 13:20, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

In other languages
I don't understand the list of words in other languages. These seem to be translations of "pneumoconiosis" as opposed to the full 45-letter word (except for the word in Portuguese). Are we to go through Wikipedia and list in every article the translations of the headword into other languages? Canon 15:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

 * Someone just shortened one of the words in the "Other languages" table. Clearly this table is confusing.  If it is supposed to be transliterations of the 45 letter word into other languages, then it has only one entry and really doesn't deserve to be in the article.  If it is supposed to be a list of translations of "pneumoconiosis" (the name of the generic lung condition) then it makes no sense to have it in the article.  Unless someone objects, I'll delete it soon. Canon 21:19, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Bengali meaning Washimfunnyenglish (talk) 08:41, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Divides into two words?
"Also, it naturally divides into two words, "pneumonoultramicroscopic" and "silicovolcanoconiosis", because "-ic" is a common suffix that forms adjectives, not an infix that joins combining forms into one word."

It sounds good, but doesn't work. The fact that microscopic is included doesn't mean you can split it into two words, because then the words make no sense. pneumono goes with osis, otherwise you get lungs very extremely small rather than lungs full of very extremely small volcanic silica dust, the disease. --Ben Brockert 03:35, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)

And what about factitious? a "factitious" word alleged to ..... Aren't all words factitious? Its not like a goat can coin a word in the dictionary. Zeichs 20:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)Zeichs

Isn't pneumonoultramicroscopic silicovolcanoconiosis two words? I don't see how the claim that it's a single word fits with English morphology. If it's a single word, then so are surrealisticpillow, hollowtree, and longestword. As far as I can see. 81.204.244.56 (talk) 00:56, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm new, sorry if I don't comment correctly. Silicosis is not the term for black lung disease, Anthracosis is the term for black lung disease, silicosis is also known as Grinder's disease, and is caused by silica dust or glass in lungs and is different than the coal-dust-caused Black lung disease. BlazeWitch (talk) 16:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)BlazeWitch

Replace AOL member website as source
The aol website cited, while quite informative, does not meet WP's reliable sources guidelines. It's a minor point, but if someone can find a better source for the little information attributed to the website, I think it would be good to replace it. -Agyle 08:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Integrating pop culture references
There was a recent "edit war" with someone deleting the pop culture section, and another restoring it. I think the three current examples are specific enough (e.g. stating the episode title) that a proper reference citation could be generated for them. However, WP's guidelines generally suggest trying to integrate such material into the body of the article. I think the Simpson's and Beerfest usages could serve to illustrate usages of the term as a disease in fictional or comedic works, despite its not being used to describe a disease in actual medicine. The Rocket Power usage seems to be using it only as a long, hard-to-spell word, and I don't see that usage as noteworthy, so would favor its deletion. Possible wording to integrate the other two:

 * While the word is not known to be used to label a disease in medical literature, it has been used for comedic effect in fictional works such as The Simpsons and Beerfest. [ Referencing the OED for the first part of the sentence, and referencing the Simpsons episode and Beerfest for the second. ]

I'd also mention that it's used in discussions of long words, including in medical literature, to try to clarify the distinction being made in that sentence. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? -Agyle 21:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

 * Nicely thought-out comments on the pop-culture references. I'd say go ahead and make those edits. - DavidWBrooks 00:25, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Typo? Surely not...
When I taught myself how to spell this word, back in the late 1970s, it was then most definitely spelt with 44 letters: "pneumonultramicroscopicsilicovolcanaconiosis."

The spelling discussed in this Wikipedia entry, by my reckoning, includes not just one but two typos: the addition of an 'o' after 'pneumon,' and the change of 'volcana' to 'volcano.'

I find it interesting that there's a debate over whether this is a 'real' word: could it be that this argument is grounded in the fact that the 45-letter 'word' "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" is a typo?

The only web reference I can find in support of my claim that this is a typo is at http://www.neophi.com/home/danielr/fun/text/t/trivia_remarks ; the Innerwebz is swamped by references to the version that, in my reality, is a typo. Perhaps this is an example of language evolution? Pendant (talk) 16:20, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

 * . Just looking at the 44-letter version, it should be obvious that it cannot be correct.  I do not see any errors in the construction of the accepted 45-letter version.  75.210.133.197 (talk) 08:07, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

The 45-letter version is redundant and an example of extraneous concatenation, but it seems we're all stuck with it:
 * 1. the standard medical prefix is pneumo- not pneumono- which you can confirm by typing pneumono- into your computer's dictionary -- the only result I get is the 45-letter word.
 * 2. siliconiosis is a disease, so why the redundant silico- and then -coniosis at the end? There is no -coniosis suffix.
 * 3. the inserted "scopic" is extraneous after "micro", which is perhaps why some people argued for two separate words.

Chopping all of this extraneous stuff would give us: pneumoultramicrosilicovolcaniosis which preserves the meaning of each component.

Thus 33 letters which probably would have sufficed as longest when Smith concocted this word as a parody. It's tempting to say he didn't know affixes, but perhaps the redundancy seemed like a good way to enhance his satire. Contrast his inefficiency with antidisestablishmentarianism which concisely contracts "sabbatarianism" for its final component.

As for its usage, I have read some years ago that it was adopted as medical terminology to describe a lung ailment common in regions where volcanic dust is an ongoing hazard. Martindo (talk) 07:29, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Pig Latin
Wouldn't the pig latin version of this word, Eumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosispnay be longer? --Luke Farrelly-Spain (talk) 17:59, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, but it's Pig Latin, not English, and thus irrelevant. Also, this is only longer because in Pig Latin, you add 2 letters (a, y) to the end of a word after repostioning the first consonant sound. I also believe that since the n is silet, it should remain at the front of the word. 24.10.238.176 (talk) 18:05, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * ❌. However, the n is not silent.  Luke is free to start a Pig Latin wiki if he desires.  75.210.133.197 (talk) 08:19, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

vandalism
"The 66-letter word was coined to serve as the longest English word and is[1] the longest word ever to appear in an English language dictionary.

tell me this is vandalism, or that this isn't wikipedia. Twipley (talk) 02:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * If you see vandalism, you can revert it without discussion. Discussion is only needed in extreme cases, when you need an admin to protect/semi-protect the article. There was language, a change in the numerical facts, and general vandalism, which is why the article has now been converted to semi-protected. Please do not repost the vandalism. 24.10.238.176 (talk) 18:07, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Coniosis?
I move that we zap the ...also spelled Coniosis.. bit. Coniosis is a generalized term meaning the disease from inhaling of dust. Pneumo.....iosis refers specifically to inhalation of silica dust.--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 13:49, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

wow —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.93.22.67 (talk) 18:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Merge
Am planning on merging and redirecting this term into silicosis as that is the more common term. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:02, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

 * No, no, no, no, no. (in short: no.) That's not something to do on a whim; Put a merge tag on the story and wait for discussion. Many people, including me, will disagree, since "pneumon ... osis" is much better known and has a quirky history. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 17:08, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

 * Few people come to this article looking for the medical condition. It is disputed whether this is a name used by the medical profession for any medical condition, and even if it is, it is not the same as silicosis since by coinage it involves only silica from volcanoes.  One could argue that this is too specialized to be useful to the medical profession, but that just argues that the word is not used by the medical profession.  By far the most common use of this word is as the longest word in English.  That it does not refer to any actual medical condition, or that it refers to a medical condition that is too specialized to be recognized as a separate condition by the medical profession, is irrelevent.  Unicorns do not exist either.  A merger is with a non-synonymous entry is contrary to WP policy.  Canon (talk) 20:51, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You should repeat this at Talk:Silicosis, where the merge discussion is supposed to be happening. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That confuses me. Shouldn't the argument be on the talk page of the entry that is in danger of going away? Canon (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

 * Well I guess one issue is that it is tagged with WP:MED and only WP:MED which of course is how i came upon it. If it is a subtype of silicosis if should be discussed on that page.  If it is notable only for being the longest word in the English language maybe it should be moved to that page.  I agree that it has little medical notability.  Maybe we should just removed the WP:MED tag.  Retag it with a WP:ENGLISH tag and all will be happy.  The Wiki Med editors will wonder off :-)  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 20:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

 * The logic of the situation is a bit subtle. Some medical professionals do not want this word listed as a medical condition because it is too long and too specialized and its origins were not within the medical profession.  Some recreational linguists do want this word listed as a medical condition because they have some evidence that it has been used as such and they fear if it is not so listed it will be removed from dictionaries.  Removing the WP:MED tag will please the first group and annoy the second group.  Listing the word as a species or synonym of silicosis will not make anyone happy.  Canon (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

 * I looked through the page and do not see any medical references only linguistic ones. If this is to stay part of WP:MED we need medical references that verify it inclusion in medicine IMO.  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 23:05, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

 * According to the second reference it is listed in the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary. Canon (talk) 05:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This is unnotable for the medicine project but notable for linguistics. I would simply eliminate most medical content, and eliminate the tag from the project, leaving most linguistic info. --Garrondo (talk) 10:16, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That makes sense to me. If people want to learn about the disease, silicosis is linked. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:18, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. Canon (talk) 14:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

(Undent) Sounds reasonable. Have removed the WP:MED tag. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:56, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I had added the disease section to keep the article from being labeled a stub. If you're going to remove that much information on a whim, you should do your part and replace it with something you feel is more proper. Perhaps the best action would have been to merely remove the WP:MED tag... --TheBigGnome —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thebiggnome (talk • contribs) 19:16, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The medical project objected that the medical information was inaccurate, in the sense that the word is not used and the information given was appropriate to the silicosis article only and hence this article was best merged into that one. So the linguists agreed to remove it.  Others might like this article merged into the longest word in English article, but the major contributors to that article have felt that the specific origin of this word is better split off into this separate article. Canon (talk) 21:23, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It sounds like this is sort of a subpage of the longest word. A number of us at WT:MED though it would be best to merge with that page for what it is worth. If you can find medical references to support that this is used by the medical community would be happy to relook at things.  Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 21:44, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's one recent usage: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/volcanic-ash-can-severely-damage-your-lungs/article1542467/ Thebiggnome (talk) 22:20, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

 * and another in the field of medical transcription: http://accurapid.com/journal/52abbreviations.htm Thebiggnome (talk) 22:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

 * Sorry I should clarify as in a journal article from pubmed. Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) 22:31, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * British Medical Journal, April 2010, http://www.ep.bmj.com/content/95/2/34.abstract Thebiggnome (talk) 23:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Where is the word in this reference? A subscription is required to read the entire article.  If it is in the British Medical Journal it is in current professional medical usage.  Speaking now as a linguist as opposed to a medical professional, the two previous references show that it is in current usage in a non-professional medical context, which is probably why it is listed in the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary.  Canon (talk) 18:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 208.83.123.136, 10 October 2010
Thw word is spelled wrong.IT is actually spelled Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.

208.83.123.136 (talk) 20:59, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Thanks, Stickee (talk)  21:56, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 96.225.150.231, 18 January 2011
word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused--- there is a extra apostpohy it need to be remover from this sentence

96.225.150.231 (talk) 04:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: that's not an apostrophe, it's an opening single quotation mark. Thanks, Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:13, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

It has 45 letters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jennykhanhle (talk • contribs) 00:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC) I know how to spell it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 letters, the longest word in the english language! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.165.73.246 (talk) 21:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Deltachief666, 26 September 2011
There is another, unmentioned, Cultural Reference that I thought should be added to the page. In The Daily Show with Jon Stewart's first book, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, they make reference to pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. In chapter 6, page 129 of the book, they joke about words to include in a campaign speech and under the 'Extra Credit' section they have humorous words, among which is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

Deltachief666 (talk) 21:03, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

 * In my humble opinon, a single mention in a printed book isn't worth them - however, some of the other cultural referenes are pretty weak, too. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 21:17, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Per the above; can't see it helps understand this article, so - not done; discuss further here if you wish  Chzz  ► 04:07, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Professor Green - D.P.M.O
This word also features as the first lyric of the song D.P.M.O by Professor Green; which is featured on his brand new album - At Your Inconvenience

Reference to OED
The present text states that the OED defines pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis as being "a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs." It does no such thing. It describes it as an invented word alleged to have that definition. This is a very different thing. The Oxford Dictionary of English goes further, stating that the disease meeting that definition is properly known as silicosis. I feel this ought to be changed, as the text presently both misrepresents the content of the reference, and suggests that the word is the name of a disease rather than an invented long word. Ché (talk) 21:39, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

 * Update: have made said change Ché (talk) 21:46, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

 * I was the one who added the OED Online reference you removed, in this 2007 update. While you attributed the OED, what you cited was the grossly dumbed-down free version of the Oxford Dictionaries website. The OED seems the better source, with a scholarly definition, but if we're relying on the OD, its current version has a different definition than what you quoted. I'm changing the lede to match the material from the cited source. Agyle (talk) 07:54, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Removing cultural references
There was only one citation in the cultural references section, and it did not verify the claim that was made.

While this is a light-hearted topic, Wikipedia still requires information to have citations to published, reliable sources (WP:RS) so that it can be verified as factual. I think primary sources are ok to cite here, if it's properly verified and cited. A proper citation should include the time (at least roughly) in the video, song, or other published recording in which the word is used, as well as author, publisher, and that sort of thing. If you're not sure how to format the citation, you can put the info here, or include all the info as your best guess, and someone else can fix the details.

If you want to try and find published recordings to cite from the section I removed, try these:
 * Rocket Power, season 2, episode 3
 * Simpsons, season 6, episode 7 (113 overall), Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy (That Wikipedia article has a poor citation regarding pneu's usage).
 * Professor Green's "Don't Piss Me Off" on the album At Your Inconvenience
 * High School Musical 2: What's What Edition
 * David Flynn's song "Floccinaucinihilipilification" the second of his tWO nONSENSE sONGS
 * I've Got A Secret, episode 670, 1965, and possibly one one of the episodes 663, 664, 697, 698.

Someone changed one of the cultural references today to say that Buddy Hacket used the term in 1964 rather than 1965; there was no citation to support either. All I can find is a detailed fan site that shows Hacket wasn't a guest on the show in 1964, that Morey Ambsterdam used the term in epsisode 670 in 1965, and someone's personal blog claiming Hacket used it in 1965 (which may be where Wikipedia's claim came from, or maybe the blog was based on Wikipedia's claim). Hacket was on a few episodes (663, 664, 697, 698) in 1965, so it may well have been used on one of those as well.

Agyle (talk) 06:46, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

2016
Page currently says the word was invented in 2016. Someone is an impressive fortune teller. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wrerskine (talk • contribs) 14:19, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Longer word?
this is not long word rather the real ever long word is cycliclastroufraguilopscnoudwechiccinaufiblation — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.133.237.52 (talk) 18:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)

Tone?
added a "tone" hatnote to this article - one of those vague tags that is (IMHO) useless because it provides no guidance as to what the editor thinks is wrong.

The tone seems fine to me, suitably encyclopedia-ic. Without some discussion detailing concerns, there's no way to respond to the tag. I think it should be removed without more information. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 16:14, 13 September 2019 (UTC)
 * , The account has been blocked as compromised. It's possible the addition of the tag was vandalism. Adam9007 (talk) 18:02, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

 * Ah ... that explains why the account left a very aggressive comment on my talk page. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 23:58, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

History of Word
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a special lung disease. Contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis.

What is the longest word in the world that takes 3 hours to say? You will be surprised to know that the longest word in English has 1,89,819 letters and will take you 3 and an half hours to say.

The longest word in any given language. The disease can cause some death! SO BE CAREFUL!!!! 166.216.159.173 (talk) 01:06, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism Occurred
This article (not the talk page) has been vandalized ("stupid") and needs fixing. Repeater-reclaim (talk) 23:30, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Done. Nardog (talk) 23:35, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
English 103.159.26.78 (talk) 04:46, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

Zero-width spaces in pronunciation?
The spacing of the introduction is pretty ugly in the mobile app. The IPA overflows past the right edge of the screen and leaves a big gap in the line above it. Tried putting zero-width spaces before every primary and secondary stress but the way the IPA is formatted it doesn't accept the spaces as valid characters. Is there a way around this? Behss (talk) 04:54, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a dictionary
The article talks more about the word than the disease. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia٫ and that isn't what an encyclopedia does. This article feels more like it belongs in a dictionary than in an encyclopedia. GenZenny (talk) 17:08, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

Delete article
Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and this article is written like one GenZenny (talk) 01:20, 26 October 2022 (UTC)

Does a second pronunciation really need to be added?
I noticed that at the end of the introduction, someone added how to pronounce the word.... But we already have a pronunciation in the first sentence. Should this be removed? Club On a Sub 20 (talk) 15:10, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

 * @Club On a Sub 20: most likely not. It's a non standardised pronunciation and doesn't add anything to the IPA pronunciation at the start. I would support removing it. Schminnte (talk • contribs) 15:21, 20 April 2023 (UTC)
 * alright then, will do. Club On a Sub 20 (talk) 14:07, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

"It should not be."
From the introduction: "It has sometimes been used as a synonym for the occupational disease known as silicosis, but it should not be as most silicosis is not related to mining of volcanic dusts."

NPOV--I don't think Wikipedia articles are the place to make normative statements about language use. 146.95.219.31 (talk) 20:34, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 April 2024
I would like to see the resources that the writer refers to. Rendang127 (talk) 04:15, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Nardog (talk) 04:23, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Marsupial poll

This page was listed on Votes for deletion. The result of that discussion was to archive the page. For an archive of the discussion, see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/WP:TOL/Marsupial poll.''

Voting
Along the way, I realised that the system I presented first, tabulating the votes in September, was not the best way to choose a system. So the new system is this:
 * When more than ten users have cast their votes, the count will be taken.
 * If any system has less than 20% of the vote, it will be dropped from the ballot.
 * Those users, if any, that supported it, will be notified on their user pages that their preferred candidate has been dropped, and they should vote again.
 * When more than fifteen users have cast their votes for the remaining four candidates, the count will be taken again.
 * Any system with less than 25% of the vote will be dropped from the ballot.
 * Those users who voted from the rejected system will be notified that they need to cast their votes again.
 * When twenty users have cast their votes on the remaining three, the count will be taken.
 * Any system having less than a third of the vote will be dropped.
 * The voters for the dropped system will be notified that they must vote again.
 * The system with the majority after this will be selected when more than thirty votes have been cast, or the end of October is reached.

ICZN
I don't have a copy myself, but the correct answer will be readily available by reference to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Does anyone have access to a copy they can look up in? - MPF 12:05, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Why would ICZN have the answer? It doesn't rule on names, only on the form they can take, and doesn't enforce any sort of priority system. I think the prsence of both systems in current literature suggests both are acceptable. Josh

Another reason that ICZN may not have the answer: there are a number of potentially 'correct answers' that can be used to classify mammals, and only one will be chosen in the ICZN. The purpose of this poll is for Wikipaedia users to choose the system they feel makes the most sense.--Ingoolemo 07:09, 2004 May 31 (UTC)

Hi Ingoolemo - "Why would ICZN have the answer?": True it doesn't rule on individual names, but it provides the legislative framework of how names are correctly selected, by date of first publication, construction (e.g. family names must end -idae, not anything else, so if someone described a new family ending in say, -alara, it would be invalidly formed), etc. So contained within the principles of the ICZN, it will be possible to conclude which name is the correct one to apply in each case. Unfortunately, I don't have the ICZN (just the ICBN, as I'm more of a plants person!), so can't really help beyond this. You'll also need to know which was published first of Placentalia / Eutheria, etc (in general, the older name is the right one to use, unless it breaches one of the other provisions of the code). Hope this helps! - MPF 08:41, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 * As to which was published first, the article under one of the -therias (I cannot recall which, but I think it was Metatheria) said that the Eutheria-Metatheria-Prototheria system was first proposed by Thomas Huxley after the earlier Placentalia-Marsupialia-Monotremata system. --Ingoolemo 03:51, 2004 Jun 3 (UTC)

MPF, the zoological code doesn't give such rules for higher level taxa, and doesn't insist on a priority system, which would change a fair number of current groups (e.g., most fish orders). Even if it did, it wouldn't apply here, because the taxa under consideration may not quite be synonyms (i.e. depending on what extinct forms they include) and vary somewhat in rank. As said, that both systems are common is an indication both are theoretically acceptable. - Josh

We aren't going to get any more votes here
It's been over a week since voting started. I think it's reasonable to say we aren't going to get any more votes here. - UtherSRG 12:09, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Its probably fair to say that System 1 is the winner. However, I would like to post this message on Talk:WikiProject Tree of Life before the alterations are made.--Ingoolemo 02:38, 2004 Jun 10 (UTC)

 * Agreed. - UtherSRG 15:53, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Current Results
As was pointed out to me recently by UtherSRG, there don't seem to be any more votes cast. As such, I intend to implement what has been recommended by those who did vote. The result: Monotremata-Marsupialia-Placentalia in the lead by a factor of three.--Ingoolemo 21:21, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)

Is this still open
I'm guessing no. But could someone answer on my talk page.--ZayZayEM 02:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


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Suling

The suling (Sundanese: ) is a musical instrument of the Sundanese people in Indonesia. It is used in the Degung ensemble. Bamboo ring flute can also be found in Southeast Asian, especially in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

Construction
Sulings are made mainly of "tamiang" bamboo (Schizostachyum blumei, Nees), a long, thin-walled bamboo tube. The mouthpiece of the suling is circled with a thin band made of rattan near a small hole.

Playing method
To play the suling, performers blow into a gap between the rattan band and the bamboo tube at one end of the instrument.

There are two factors that affect a fine suling's tone:
 * 1) Fingering position.
 * 2) Speed of the airflow blown by the mouth.

The fingering position changes the wavelength of sound resonance inside the suling's body. Depending on the distance of nearest hole to the suling's head, different notes can be produced. The airflow speed also can modify the tone's frequency. A note with twice frequency can be produced mostly by blowing the air into suling's head's hole with twice speed.

In the music of Bali the suling is an essential instrument and it appears to be similar to other forms of Javanese suling. The way it is played, however, sets it apart from other forms of Indonesian suling. Namely, it is necessary for the performers to use the technique circular breathing in order to create a highly strung sense of constancy that continues even at moments of dramatic climax by the percussive gamelan instruments.

Special effects

 * Slur, is dynamically changing note from one tone position to another position without stopping the airflow. For example, changing from 5 to 4, 4 to 5, 2 to 1 etc.
 * Puruluk, (Sundanese term) is an effect produced by a-repeatedly-fast opening-and-closing of suling's hole by one or more fingers. The produced sound is similar to voice of a pigeon. The easiest puruluk can be produced by opening and closing mid-finger as shown by the following picture:

 * In Sundanese technique, there are other known effects such as wiwiw, keleter, lelol, gebos, petit, jengkat, and betrik.

Sundanese
In the Sundanese region, a suling is used as
 * one of the main instruments in kacapi suling
 * accompanying instrument in Gamelan Degung, Tembang Sunda

Tuning
Sulings can have either 4 holes or 6 holes. The 6-holed Sundanese suling can play at least three different scales. Some custom sulings have 7 or 8 holes as additional holes for playing extended scales such as Mandalungan, the transposed version of Degung.
 * Pelog Degung: da mi na ti la da [1 2 3 4 5 1], nearly corresponds to do si sol fa mi do [1' 7 5 4 3 1] in the Western diatonic scale.
 * Madenda or Sorog: da mi na ti la da [1 2 3 4 5 1], nearly similar to fa mi do si la fa [4’ 3’ 1’ 7 6 4] in the Western diatonic scale. Madenda conceptually played by changing the 3rd note of Degung [1' 7 5 4 3 1] in diatonic scale to [1' 7 6 4 3 1], and move the Sundanese 1/da to the Western 4/fa position.
 * Saléndro: da mi na ti la da [1 2 3 4 5 1], nearly similar to re do la sol fa re [2’ 1’ 6 5 4 2] in the Western diatonic scale. Salendo tone are almost five-equally divided tones, called as Saléndro Padantara (equal interval). Unequal division of Saléndro notes called as Saléndro Bédantara (unequal interval).
 * Mandalungan: a rarely used scale, similar to Degung scale, but it is actually a transposed Degung via changing the 4th tone of Madenda [4' 3' 1' 7 6 4] in Western diatonic scale to [4' 3' 1' ♭7 6 4]. Basically sounds the same as Degung, just with a different transposition. This scale needs an extra hole (usually in the back of suling) to play.
 * Mandalungan: a rarely used scale, similar to Degung scale, but it is actually a transposed Degung via changing the 4th tone of Madenda [4' 3' 1' 7 6 4] in Western diatonic scale to [4' 3' 1' ♭7 6 4]. Basically sounds the same as Degung, just with a different transposition. This scale needs an extra hole (usually in the back of suling) to play.

The following picture shows the fingering for a six-holed Sundanese suling.

And below is the example of 'more realistic' view of finger positioning for the pelog degung scale.

Famous Sundanese suling players
The Suling can be many sizes
 * Endang Sukandar, 1996 2nd Winner of International Festival of Wind Instruments in Seoul, South Korea
 * Burhan Sukarma
 * Uking Sukri
 * Bang Saat(Additional player of Dewa Budjana, He came from kalimantan) He also called as "saat"

Suling outside Indonesia
In Brunei, the suling today is played during a cultural festival and other events together with other Bruneian traditional instruments especially the Gulintangan. While in East Malaysia, especially in Sabah with a wide variety of aerophone, the instrument is played by all the interior ethnic groups in the state of Kadazan-Dusun, Murut, Rungus and Lun Bawang/Lundayeh. In Sarawak, the suling is mostly played by men in a Dayak people longhouse.

It is also called as suling by the Tausug, Yakan, B'laan, and Tiruray. Other names for the suling include the lantey (Ata), kinsi (Bukidnon), dagoyong (Higanon) and a babarak (Palawan)

The Maguindanaon suling is the smallest bamboo flute of the Maguindanaon and the only one classified as a ring-flute (the other two bamboo flutes of the Maguindanaon, the tumpong and the palendag are both lip-valley flutes). Air is passed through the suling via a blowing hole found at the bottom of the instrument and pitch is controlled via five finger holes on the top and one finger hole located on the bottom. Traditionally only the palendag was commonly played but because of the difficult nature of playing the palendag, both the tumpong and the suling have come to replace the palendag as the Maguindanaon’s most common aerophones.

title: Suling


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John Hopps (physicist)

John H. Hopps (1939 – May 14, 2004) was an American physicist and politician. A native of Dallas, Texas, Hopps was a Ford Scholar to Morehouse College, also receiving degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where he was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity) and Brandeis University. After his graduation in 1971, Hopps joined the faculty at Ohio State University, and later accepted a research position in nuclear engineering at MIT, and was a member of leadership at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.

In 1992, Hopps joined the National Science Foundation, where he was director of the division of materials sciences, and in 1995 returned to Morehouse, where he became provost and senior vice-president. Hopps was appointed by President George W. Bush as deputy Undersecretary of Defense, in 2001, where he oversaw research for defense and engineering, a position he held until his death on 14 May 2004 in Potomac, Maryland.

title: John Hopps (physicist)


text:
Cunning folk in Britain

The cunning folk were professional or semi-professional practitioners of magic in Europe from the medieval period through the early 20th century. In Britain they were known by a variety of names in different regions of the country, including wise men and wise women, pellars, wizards, dyn hysbys, and sometimes white witches.

These people practised folk and low magic – although often combined with elements of "high" or ceremonial magic – which they learned through the study of grimoires. Primarily using spells and charms as a part of their profession, they were most commonly employed to use their magic to combat malevolent witchcraft, to locate criminals, missing persons or stolen property, for fortune telling, for healing, for treasure hunting and to influence people to fall in love. Belonging "to the world of popular belief and custom", the cunning folk's magic has been defined as being "concerned not with the mysteries of the universe and the empowerment of the magus [as ceremonial magic usually is], so much as with practical remedies for specific problems." However, other historians have noted that in some cases, there was apparently an "experimental or 'spiritual' dimension" to their magical practices, something which was possibly shamanic in nature.

Although the British cunning folk were in almost all cases Christian themselves, certain Christian theologians and Church authorities believed that, being practitioners of magic, the cunning folk were in league with the Devil and as such were akin to the more overtly Satanic and malevolent witches. Partly because of this, laws were enacted across England, Scotland and Wales that often condemned cunning folk and their magical practices, but there was no widespread persecution of them akin to the witch hunt, largely because most common people firmly distinguished between the two: witches were seen as being harmful and cunning folk as useful.

Comparable figures were found in other parts of Western Europe: in France, such terms as devins-guérisseurs and leveurs de sorts were used for them, whilst in the Netherlands they were known as toverdokters or duivelbanners, in Germany as Hexenmeisters and in Denmark as kloge folk. In Spain they were curanderos whilst in Portugal they were known as saludadores. It is widely agreed by historians and folklorists, such as Willem de Blécourt, Robin Briggs and Owen Davies, that the term "cunning folk" could be applied to all of these figures as well to reflect a pan-European tradition.

Societal role
In Britain in the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, folk magic was widely popular. Many individuals knew of some magical charms and spells, but there were also professionals who dealt in magic, including charmers, fortune tellers, astrologers and cunning folk, the last of whom were said to "possess a broader and deeper knowledge of such techniques and more experience in using them" than the average person; it was also believed that they "embodied or could work with supernatural power which greatly increased the effectiveness of the operations concerned."

The terms "cunning man" and "cunning woman" were most widely used in southern England, the Midlands, and in Wales. Such people were also frequently known across England as "wizards", "wise men" or "wise women", or in southern England and Wales as "conjurers" or as "dynion hysbys" in the Welsh language. In Cornwall they were sometimes referred to as "pellars", which some etymologists suggest originated from the term "expellers", referring to the practice of expelling evil spirits. Nineteenth-century folklorists often used the term "white witch" to refer to cunning folk, although this was infrequently used amongst the ordinary people themselves, as for them the term "witch" had general connotations of malevolence and evil.

Demographics
The number of cunning folk in Britain at any one time is uncertain. Nevertheless historian Owen Davies has speculated that, based on his own research into English cunning folk (which excluded those in Scotland and Wales), that "Up until the mid nineteenth century there may have been as many as several thousand working in England at any given time." Although there was a twentieth-century stereotype that cunning folk usually lived and worked in rural areas of Britain, evidence shows that there were also many in towns and cities. Around two-thirds of recorded cunning folk in Britain were male, although their female counterparts were "every bit as popular and commercially successful as the men, and indeed this was one of the few means by which ordinary women could achieve a respected and independent position" in the British society of the time.

The cunning folk of Britain were often from the societal class that included artisans, tradesmen, and farmers, and as such were commonly at least semi-literate and of a higher social position than common labourers. In many cases they continued in their ordinary line of work alongside earning money as a professional cunning man or woman. In almost all cases, cunning folk worked either alone, as a solitary magical practitioner, or with one other person, such as a spouse or sibling. The only known exception was in early nineteenth-century Manchester, where several cunning men used to meet in a group, centred around the most prominent of their members, a cunning fellow called Rawlinson. This method of working alone was one factor that separated the cunning folk from the stereotype of witches then prevalent in Britain, which often held that these witches met together in groups, sometimes known as covens, and at times flew through the air to get to their meeting points.

Becoming a cunning person
In most cases, it seems that individuals set themselves up as cunning folk with no former basis or training, although others came from a family background of professional magical practitioners. One of the most prominent examples of a family dynasty of cunning people was the Harries family from Cwrt y Cadno in Wales: Henry Harries (1739–1805) was a yeoman farmer who had interests in astrology and medicine but did not practice as a cunning man, whilst his son John (1785–1839) and two grandsons Henry and John instead became professionals in the field. As Owen Davies remarked, "There are a number of reasons why people may have wanted to become cunning-folk. The desire for money, power or social prestige, and even to do good, all undoubtedly played their part." Some practitioners genuinely believed they had magical powers, while some later admitted in court that they had no such powers but were simply pretending that they did to fool people for their money. Indeed, there was a great deal of variability amongst the British cunning folk, with historian Ronald Hutton remarking that "they appear as a remarkably heterogeneous collection of individuals, divided by at least as many characteristics as those which they had in common."

"Cunning-folk operated in a competitive market where reputations and first impressions were very important", and as such often worked on their personal promotion. Some were known to travel relatively large distances to visit their clients as well as making calls during the night if requested. Some, though by no means all, were also known to wear "striking costume or home decorations" to enhance their reputations as magical individuals-- a nineteenth-century cunning woman, for instance, might wear a conical hat and a robe with mystical signs on it, as well as hanging herbs and papers from the ceiling of her home. Similarly, James "Cunning" Murrell, the nineteenth-century cunning man of Hadleigh in south-east Essex, wore iron goggles and carried a whalebone umbrella whenever he went out, whilst Mother Merne, the late 19th and early 20th-century wise woman of Milborne Down in Dorset, kept guinea pigs, black hens, a black goat and a black cat; the cat would sit on her shoulder during consultations with clients.

Services
The cunning folk typically performed several different services in their local communities, using what they claimed to be their own magical powers.

Opposing witchcraft
One of the most common services that the cunning folk provided was in combating the effects of malevolent witchcraft and the curses which these witches had allegedly placed upon people. Alongside this, they were also known at times for identifying witches, and in this manner they were "the only healers to offer a comprehensive package of anti-witch measures." British cunning folk were known to use a variety of methods to cure someone of malevolent sorcery, including tackling the witch either physically or through the law courts, breaking the spell over the individual by magical means, and by using charms and potions to remove the witchcraft from the afflicted person's body. As historian Owen Davies noted, "Most cunning-folk employed a multi-pronged approach to curing witchcraft, using a combination of written charms, magic rituals, prayers and herbal medicines, thereby appealing to the physical, psychological and spiritual needs of the sick."

One of the best known means by which the cunning folk opposed witchcraft was through the use of witch bottles; ceramic bottles containing such items as urine, nails, hair and nail clippings which it was believed, when put together, would cause harm to the malevolent witch. Another commonly used method was to take the heart of an animal, and to pierce it with pins, to do harm to the witch, whilst other cunning folk preferred to make dolls of the witch out of rags and other materials and then pierce them with pins, again with the intention of inflicting physical harm on the witch, and breaking their bewitchment.

Amongst the common people who often went to the cunning folk for aid, these magical practitioners were seen as being very much distinct from witches; as Davies noted, to the average person "witches were evil but cunning-folk were useful". Some theologians and figures of Church authority nonetheless believed that the cunning-folk, in practising magic, were also, like the witches, following the Devil, a malevolent supernatural entity in Christian mythology. Such a viewpoint was not constrained to any one particular form of Christianity in this period, but was found amongst the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church of England and also various forms of Protestantism. Some early Quakers, a Protestant denomination founded in the seventeenth century, were particularly vocal against the cunning folk, perhaps because they themselves were accused by their critics of using sorcery to attract new members, and so wanted to heavily distance themselves from such practices.

Locating property and criminals
The cunning folk were also commonly employed to locate missing or stolen property and uncover the perpetrator: this was of particular importance throughout the Early Modern period, when peoples' possessions were far more valued than in later centuries as they were expensive to replace, particularly for the poor. There are recorded cases where the cunning folk would also promise to ensure that the stolen property was returned, and in some of these they did prove successful, with the thief promptly returning what they had taken, something which may have been out of their own fear of being cursed by the cunning folk. At times, such cunning individuals were also known to locate missing persons: an example of this was reported in 1617, as John Redman of Sutton discovered that his wife had left him, and "went from wizard to wizard, or, as they term them 'wise men', to have them bring her again".

The methods used to perform this service differed amongst the cunning folk, although astrology was one of the most commonly used ways. In some cases, the cunning man or woman would instead get their client to give them a list of names of people whom they suspected of having stolen their property, and from which they would use various forms of divination to come to a conclusion regarding who was the guilty party, or alternately they would get their client to scry with a reflective surface such as a mirror, crystal ball, piece of glass or bowl of water, and then allow them to see an image of the culprit themselves. According to historian Owen Davies, this was an "alternative, less risky strategy" than divination or astrology because it allowed the client to confirm "their own suspicions without cunning-folk having to name someone explicitly." Other techniques could be described by today's standards as psychological or even downright deceptive. Cunning folk might use these methods to "intimidate the guilty" or "prompt their clients into identifying criminal suspects"; for example cunning woman Alice West would hide in a closet near the front door and eavesdrop on small-talk before greeting a client, then upon meeting the client she would explain that already knew their business because the fairies told her.

The concept of cunning folk locating criminals using magical means concerned some people in power in England, and there are records from London in the fourteenth century showing that certain cunning folk themselves were brought to trial because of their accusations against other members of the community: for instance, in 1382 a cunning man named Robert Berewold was brought to court after accusing a woman named Johanna Wolsy of stealing a drinking bowl from a house in St Mildred Poultry. In the trial, it emerged that Berewold had come to his conclusion through a form of divination known as "turning the loaf" where a wooden peg was stuck into the top of a loaf of bread with four knives then stuck into the sides. A list of names would then be spoken, and according to the theory, the loaf would supposedly turn when the name of the thief was spoken. Berewold was found guilty of making unsubstantiated and damaging claims, and punished in the pillory.

Healing

The cunning folk were widely visited for aid in healing various ailments for both humans and their livestock, particularly from poorer members of the community who could not afford the fees charged by apothecaries and physicians. Records indicate that the cunning folk used a wide variety of different methods to cure their clients, "from the simply laying on of hands to the use of elaborate rituals."

In 1846, the Chelmsford Chronicle reported that an ill young man, that physians had been unable to help, followed the advice of a cunning woman who resided between the Epping Forest and Ongar, Essex to cure his illness: "'That a small nut should be cut in twain, the kernel extracted, and a live spider placed in the shell, which was to be sewn up in a bag and worn round his neck, and as the spider wasted, so would the fever leave him.'"

At times, they would use various herbs and plants to develop medicines and folk cures that they believed would help. At other times, they employed more overtly magical means, such as the use of charms and prayers, which were usually very much Christian in nature, commonly invoking the power of the Christian Trinity to heal the sick. In keeping with this Christian basis, sometimes religious objects like holy water, candle wax or Eucharist wafers were used in healing. On occasion, live animals would be used as a part of the treatment, for instance in 1604, the Northumberland cunning women Katherine Thompson and Anne Nevelson were convicted by a court for placing a duck's beak to a woman's mouth whilst reciting charms as a form of healing.

Cunning folk at times were also known to offer abortions, usually via a poisonous potion that would kill the foetus, but there were cases where the potion also made the pregnant woman very ill.

Other services
British cunning folk would also often be involved in love magic, offering services pertaining to sex and relationships. One form of this was a form of fortune telling where they would divine the name or appearance of a client's future lover, often using palmistry, scrying or astrology. Another popular practice of the cunning folk was the casting of spells or charms to ensure a spouse's fidelity, preventing them from committing adultery; for instance, a cunning man from Newcastle upon Tyne, Peter Banks, was charged in 1673–74 with offering to draw up a magical contract which would bind a husband to staying loyal to his wife for a year.

Some cunning folk claimed to have the ability to locate treasure, and at times were employed by people in this capacity. In some of these cases it was believed that a supernatural entity, such as a demon, spirit or fairy, was guarding the hidden treasure, and that a cunning practitioner was needed to overcome them using magical means.

There were also claims that certain cunning folk occasionally performed bewitching or cursing for a fee, which under some definitions would make them witches as well as cunning people. The folklorist Eric Maple, after examining several 19th-century cunning folk in Essex, noted that one of them, George Pickingill, also performed cursing for clients, but that the other whom he examined, James Murrell, considered it immoral and so did not. Indeed, other Essex cunning folk were associated with witchcraft, notably in the village of Sible Hedingham, where there lived an elderly French cunning man who had previously had his tongue cut out, and was consequently dumb, as well as being deaf. As a result he was known as "Dummy" in the local community, who generally disliked him, largely because of his 'otherness' in being both foreign and disabled, and rumours spread that he was a witch who would curse them. In 1863 a drunken mob attacked him, throwing him in a river to see if he would sink or float (a traditional method of identifying a witch, who it was believed would float, whereas an innocent would sink), but the resulting shock killed the elderly man, who was in his eighties. Another notable case of a cunning person performing cursing and malevolent witchcraft comes from nineteenth-century Norwich, where a wise woman who went by the pseudonym of "Virtue" used to demand gifts from her neighbours, threatening them with cursing if they refused.

Magical beliefs and praxes
As historian Willem de Blécort noted, "the different services the [cunning-folk] provided did not form part of an overall 'magic' system". Indeed, whilst the magical practices of the cunning folk were typically folk magical in content, there were also those who dabbled in ceremonial magic, or "high magic", based primarily on what they had gleaned from books of magic, or grimoires.

Spellcasting and charms
The cunning folk often produced written charms for their clients, which would be used in many ways, such as to protect from witchcraft or to help procure love. These typically contained a series of words that were believed to have magical powers, and which were commonly drawn either from grimoires or from the Bible. These might be produced on paper, which was the cheaper option, or, in certain cases, parchment, which according to certain magical texts should have been made from the skin of a virgin or unborn calf. "Most written charms contained a strong religious content", typically invoking various names of God (such as Elohim, Adonai, Tetragrammaton etc) or of His angels to help the particular charm to be effective. In some cases they quoted whole sections from the Bible, sometimes in either Latin, Greek or Hebrew rather than the vernacular English. Or they used "magic" words, such as "Abracadabra" or the palindrome "sator arepo tenet opera rotas". Such charms were then sometimes sewn into a bag, or placed within a bottle, and either carried about by the client or placed somewhere in their home.

In the 19th century, a ritual known as the toad bone rite became popular, particularly in East Anglia but also in other areas of the country, amongst both cunning folk and members of magical organizations such as the Scottish Society of the Horseman's Word and the East Anglian Society of Horsemen. Originally based upon an ancient southern European magical practice documented by Pliny, it had later been purported in the works of Cornelius Agrippa and Reginald Scot, which were read by several literate cunning folk. Although there were many variations, the ritual typically involved the killing of a toad or frog, having its flesh stripped from the bones by ants, and then throwing the bone into a stream at night. It was believed that this would grant the practitioner, who was known as a Toad Man, the ability to perform certain magical tasks.

Grimoires
When printed books on the occult, particularly in the English language, had begun to be produced, some cunning folk obtained, and used, grimoires, or books of magic. In many cases they made a big show of the fact that they owned such tomes, which would have appeared impressive in the minds of many of their customers in a period where only a minority of people were able to read and write in Britain. Indeed, some cunning folk appeared to own these grimoires purely for cosmetic reasons, to impress their clients, and did not actually make use of any of the magical rituals contained within them.

Whilst grimoires had been around in Europe since the ancient period, and many new grimoires had been produced during the Medieval, they had remained highly expensive and hand written items that the average person would not have had access to. In the Early Modern period, this began to change as the invention of printing allowed grimoires to be produced in greater numbers; initially this had primarily been in languages other than English, particularly Latin, but in the mid-sixteenth century, English translations of Albertus Magnus' Book of Secrets were produced, whilst the printing of English-language grimoires increased in the seventeenth century. Another significant grimoire to be published in English was James Freake's translation of Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, which "must have generated a good deal of interest among [the cunning folk] and other less well-educated magical practitioners at the time." Equally popular was the English astrologer Robert Turner's translation of the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy (1655), which was erroneously attributed to having been written by Agrippa.

However, perhaps "the most influential vehicle for the dissemination of high magic to a wider audience was, in fact, Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft", a book first published in the early seventeenth century in which Scot condemned the cunning folk as liars and tricksters, but in which he had also provided a wide variety of talismans, charms and rituals as examples of what the cunning folk and ceremonial magicians used and performed. This book was subsequently republished on several occasions, and copies were obtained by a wide variety of cunning craft practitioners who used the information in the work to enhance their own magical praxes.

Familiar spirits and Fairyland
Some cunning folk were said to employ supernatural entities known as familiar spirits to aid them in their practice of magic. These spirits, which were also believed to work for witches as well, are referenced in many of the witch trial records from the Early Modern period. After examining these accounts, historian Emma Wilby noted how in the descriptions given of familiar spirits by both cunning folk and those accused of witchcraft, there was "a pervading sense of naturalism", with most familiars resembling "relatively ordinary humans or animals with only slight, if any, visual anomalies." For instance, folklorist Eric Maple noted that in the English region of East Anglia during the latter nineteenth century, it was commonly thought that familiar spirits, which were often referred to as "imps" in that region, took the form of white mice. There were however some exceptions to these naturalistic familiars, for instance a woman in Cambridgeshire was believed to have a familiar spirit that was a cross between a frog and a rat.

Wilby identified many similarities between the familiars recorded as serving cunning folk and those serving witches, with a general, though by no means universal, attribution of cunning folk's familiars with being benevolent and helping people, whilst those belonging to witches were more often thought of as being malevolent and causing harm. Again, in general the former were often referred to as "fairies" and the latter as "demons". Wilby noted how both British cunning folk and witches often described similar scenarios for how they had first encountered their familiar: most prominent of these was the claim that the familiar had simply appeared spontaneously whilst they went about their everyday activities, whilst other claims held that the witch or cunning person had inherited it from another magical practitioner, who was usually a family member, or that they had been given it by a more powerful spirit. The magical practitioner and the familiar then set about establishing a working relationship, sometimes solidified in a pact.

At times, the familiar spirit was believed to take the cunning person on a visionary journey to a place called Elfhame (literally meaning "elf-home"), which is now often referred to as Fairyland. In these trips, the cunning folk's soul was typically believed to go with their familiar on a journey into a hill, within which they would find a great subterranean fairy hall. In the hall, they would find a company of fairies, led by a king and queen, and would take part in feasting, drinking and dancing. Wilby connected the cunning folk's trip to Fairyland with the witches' believed trip to the sabbat meeting, which she also believed was a visionary journey. She accepted the theory, based upon the ideas of earlier historians such as Carlo Ginzburg and Éva Pócs, that the concept of the Witches' Sabbath was developed through the Christian demonizing of earlier pre-Christian concepts of the visit to Fairyland.

Historian Ronald Hutton remarked that "It is quite possible that pre-Christian mythology lies behind this tradition" of a belief in familiar spirits. Such an idea was supported by Wilby, who compared the accounts of familiar spirits in Britain with anthropological and ethnographic accounts of helper spirits given by shamans in both Siberia and North America. Noting a wide range of similarities between the two, she came to the conclusion that British belief in familiars must have been a surviving remnant of earlier animistic and shamanic beliefs in the pre-Christian religions of the island.

Christian elements
Britain throughout the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods was an almost entirely Christian society (with the only exception being a small Jewish population), although during this period there was a gradual shift from adherence to Roman Catholicism to forms of Anglicanism and Protestantism following the English Reformation in the sixteenth century. It was because of this that the cunning folk operating in this era typically worked within a Christian framework and world view.

This Christian influence was evident in much of their magical praxes. For instance, the historian Owen Davies believed that the written charms supplied by cunning folk displayed the "intrinsic Christian content of [their] magic" and the influence of mystical and magical words taken from the Bible. Historian Ronald Hutton concurred with this assessment, remarking that "Looking at the recorded charms dispensed by magical practitioners, it is obvious that many – perhaps the majority – are Christian in character. They quote from the Bible, or appeal to the Trinity, or to Jesus, or to saints. In most cases, to be sure, they are using the trappings and symbols of Christianity with little regard to what the churchmen would have regarded as its essence; the Bible ... This is, however, a large part of what popular Christianity had always been about, and something that had caused learned and devout members of the faith to tear their hair at intervals ever since the time of the Church Fathers."

In keeping with the general population of the time, there were those cunning folk who were little more than nominal in their Christian belief as well as those that were devout. This was illustrated by historian James Obelkevitch in his examination of nineteenth-century popular religion in the southern part of the Lincolnshire chalk hills, when he note that the three main cunning people of the area, whilst each holding to a Christian worldview, each had different particular religious attachment. One of these, "Fiddler" Fynes, regularly attended church services and was an essentially conventional Christian for that period, whilst the second, John Worsdale of Lincoln, was similarly devout but was unconventional in that he rejected the need for a professional clergy. The third, Stainton of Louth, believed in a Christian theology and cosmology, but saw little point in worshipping the Christian God because he felt that in working with magic, "the Devil has hold" of him.

Although some twentieth and twenty-first century Neopagan authors, such as Rae Beth, have claimed that the British cunning folk were followers of a surviving, pre-Christian "pagan" religion, this is something rejected by historians. As Ronald Hutton noted, whilst there was pagan influences in some folk magical charms and a possible connection through the belief in familiar spirits, there is "no known case of a cunning person or a charmer calling upon a pagan deity."

Medieval period
In England during the Early Medieval period, various forms of folk magic could be found amongst the Anglo-Saxons, who referred to such practitioners as wicca (male) or wicce (female), or at times also as dry, practitioners of drycraeft, the latter of which have been speculated as being anglicised terms for the Irish drai, a term referring to druids, who appeared as anti-Christian sorcerers in much Irish literature of the period. Some of the spells and charms that had been used in the Anglo-Saxon pagan era continued to be used following Christianization. However, as historian Owen Davies noted, "although some such pre-Christian magic continued, to label it pagan is to misrepresent the people who used it and the context in which it was used."

The extent to which elements from pre-Christian pagan religions influenced the cunning folk is debatable. Owen Davies believed that "few historical insights are to be gained from seeking an archaic or shamanic lineage for cunning-folk." Such a claim has subsequently been challenged by Emma Wilby, who has put forward the case that the belief in familiar spirits, and the visionary journeys into Fairyland that sometimes accompanied them, were survivals from "pre-Christian animism".

England and Wales
In England and Wales, which were politically united by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, cunning folk had operated throughout the latter part of the Medieval and into the Early Modern period. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there had been no attempt to illegalise the cunning craft, although private lawsuits had been brought against some of them by those clients who felt that they had been cheated out of their money. This changed with the Witchcraft Act 1541, enacted under the reign of Henry VIII, which targeted both witches and cunning folk, and which prescribed the death penalty for such crimes as using invocations and conjurations to locate treasure or to cast a love spell. This law was repealed no later than 1547, under the reign of Henry's son Edward VI, something that the historian Owen Davies believed was due to those in power changing their opinion on the law: they believed that either the death penalty was too harsh for such crimes or that the practice of the cunning craft was a moral issue that was better for the Church to deal with in ecclesiastic courts rather than a problem that had to be sorted out by the state.

For the following few decades, the magical practices of the cunning folk remained legal, despite opposition from certain religious authorities. It was a time of great religious upheaval in the country as Edward's successor, his sister Mary I, reintroduced Roman Catholicism, before Anglicanism was once again reimposed under Elizabeth I. In 1563, after the return of power to the Anglican Church of England, a bill was passed by parliament designed to illegalise "Conjurations, Enchantments and Witchcrafts", again being aimed at both the alleged witches and the cunning folk. However, this law was not as harsh as its earlier predecessor, with the death penalty being reserved for those who were believed to have conjured an evil spirit or murdered someone through magical means, whilst those for whom the use of magic was a first offence faced a year's imprisonment and four stints in the pillory. Nonetheless, this law would have little effect on the cunning folk, as "the attention and focus of the courts shifted away from the activities of cunning-folk and towards the maleficium of supposed witches" – the Witch Hunt that had been raging in Scotland and in many parts of continental Europe had finally arrived in England.

Whilst across England, many people were accused of witchcraft by members of their local communities and put on trial, the cunning folk very rarely suffered a similar fate. It was unusual for a cunning man or woman to actually be accused of witchcraft; in the county of Essex for instance, whereas around four hundred people had been put on trial for witchcraft, only four of those were identifiably cunning folk. However, many of the professional witch-hunters and theologians continued to proclaim the cunning craft as being the same as witchcraft, with them both being caused by the Devil. One pamphlet published that espoused these views claimed that the cunning folk should be "most cruelly executed: for that no punishment can bee [sic] thought upon, be it never so high a degree of torment, which may be deemed sufficient for such a divelish [sic] and danable [sic] practise." Their views however were not supported by the general population, who continued to see a distinct difference between witchcraft and cunning craft, with the witch-hunter John Stearne, an associate of Matthew Hopkins, remarking that whilst he and Hopkins wanted to prosecute the cunning folk, they could not because "men rather uphold them, and say, why should any man be questioned for doing good."

Meanwhile, the idea of the cunning folk began to appear in the literature of the period. In 1638, the playwright Thomas Heywood published his comedy, The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, whilst in 1684 another playwright, Edward Ravenscroft, published his own play about a cunning woman. With the decline in the witch trials in the latter part of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, partly due to the rise of the Enlightenment amongst the educated elite, a new law was introduced, the Witchcraft Act 1735. Unlike earlier laws, this did not accept the existence of magic, and was designed to be used to prosecute those who claimed magical powers as being fraudulent; it could therefore be very damaging to the cunning profession. The new regulations imposed by the Witchcraft Act 1735 laid down a maximum penalty of a year's imprisonment for the crime of deceiving people by claiming magical powers, but in effect, during the rest of the eighteenth century, there were very few prosecutions, with most authorities not bothering to enforce this particular law.

Scotland
Throughout the Early Modern period, Scotland remained a distinct political entity from England and Wales, having its own independent government and monarchy. However, like the rest of Britain, it also saw cunning folk operating within its borders.

A 1932 article by Lewis Spence in The Weekly Scotsman, responding to the popularization of Margaret Murray's Witch-cult hypothesis, stated that 'the Saxon word "wicca", a witch, as well as the term "carline" were of immemorial usage' in lowland Scotland while in the highlands, where English words were less known, 'wise women' or "Nicnevins" ("daughters of heaven") were used. Spence argued that a native tradition had 'flourished' in Scotland, and elsewhere in Britain, and, while it maintained many differences, had been greatly influenced by French practices from the mid-fifteenth century and this saw the introduction of the word 'witch'. While still associating folk tradition with 'witchcraft' he suggested it was 'a widespread cult of pagan origin, having a well-digested system of medical and magical lore of its own, a distant ritual, and with affiliations throughout the whole of the Lowlands and a certain part of the Highlands'.

Nineteenth and twentieth centuries
By the nineteenth century, Scotland had been politically united with England, Wales and also Ireland as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, controlled by a central government in London. Such a political union also brought about an increase in cultural diffusion and unity between the various nations. It was in nineteenth-century Scotland that an agricultural organization that acted as both a trade union and a magical fraternity known as the Society of the Horseman's Word was founded. Its members, whilst not being cunning folk, practiced folk magic, and soon an English alternative, the Society of Horsemen, had also been founded. The spread of such magical groups and their ideas could be seen in the diffusion of the toad bone rite, which was used by such horseman's groups and various cunning folk, and examples of which could be found scattered across Britain, from Nevern in Pembrokeshire, Wales, to East Anglia in England.

At the start of the nineteenth century, the popularity of cunning folk continued, and there was still a large and lucrative market for their services, for instance in 1816, there were eight different wise women working independently in the English coastal town of Whitby. Nonetheless, the nineteenth century also saw an increase in the numbers of those cunning folk being prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act of 1736, possibly because "members of the social elite came to perceive that a faith in magic [far from having been eradicated as they had hoped,] seemed to be as prevalent among the populace as it had been a hundred years before, even while a growing political turbulence among commoners gave their rulers a new interest in the idea of education and civility as stabilizing forces." Soon after this, in 1824, a new law commonly referred to as the Vagrancy Act 1824 was introduced, bringing about a further blow to the cunning profession by outlawing "persons pretending or professing to tell fortunes, or using any subtle craft, means and device, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive and impose." The enacting of the law led to the increased prosecutions of cunning folk, something that would only begin to wane in the 1910s.

A news report from 1870 detailed a number of cases brought before authorities in the nineteenth century where claims of powers were made, but it ridiculed the belief, and closed with an example where 'the charge was settled down to the more definite one of obtaining a shilling under false pretenses'.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the number of cunning folk across Britain had dropped markedly from that of a century before, and by the 1940s they had essentially vanished from the country. Despite this, other professional practitioners of popular magic, such as astrologers and fortune tellers, continued to remain popular. The historian Owen Davies believed that the primary reason for the decline in the cunning craft was the declining belief in the existence of malevolent witchcraft in the country (something brought about by modernization and increasing education and literacy rates), and therefore the collapse of any need for the anti-witchcraft measures that the cunning folk offered as their primary service. Whilst many of their magical practices continued to be used, being performed by folk and ceremonial magicians or being absorbed into new religious movements that used magic such as Wicca, Davies concluded that the actual profession itself died out. Historian Ronald Hutton however believed that it was more accurate to state that the cunning craft, rather than dying out, "changed character" by being absorbed into other magical currents. The decline of the cunning craft in Britain was not however indicative of other European nations: in Italy for example, cunning practitioners continued operating right into the early twenty-first century.

Modern occultists
Some of the magical practices and charms of the cunning-folk were passed down and continued to be used after the decline of the profession, although because they were no longer typically used to fight malevolent witchcraft in a professional sense, historian Owen Davies did not believe that those who practiced them could be accurately seen as cunning-folk. As he noted:

"How many contemporary white-witches regularly practice both thief magic and unbewitching on a commercial basis? A self-styled wise-woman today who does not deal with bewitched clients is not a wise-woman as defined historically. [Malevolent] Witchcraft was the glue that held the concept of cunning-folk together... This is not to belittle the role of modern magical healers. They continue to provide relief and comfort to people, just as cunning-folk did. Rather, it is an attempt to clarify where they stand in relation to those formerly described as cunning-folk. People who refer to themselves as such ought to be fully aware of their relationship to their historical namesakes, and be aware of the conceptual and social differences that separate them."

He noted that many of those currently referring to themselves as cunning-folk, wise women, white witches and the like during the 1990s and 2000s were explicitly Neopagan in their faith, which influenced their magical workings. He also noted that many of them referred to themselves as "hedge witches", a term that was first developed by the writer Rae Beth in her book Hedge Witch: A Guide to Solitary Witchcraft (1990). Beth explicitly stated that the magical practices that she was purporting were the original practices of the cunning-folk, but she had incorrectly connected them to ancient paganism and the Witch-Cult. This was something Davies criticised, stating that:

"[T]here is still a considerable gulf between hedge witches and cunning-folk, not only in relation to the unbewitching trade, but also from a religious point of view. Cunning-folk were essentially Christian. Whether conscientious churchgoers or not, they employed the Bible and Christian rites and rituals. Hedge witches, on the other hand, are mostly [Neo]pagans in some form or other. They worship nature and have an animistic conception of the physical environment. This, in turn, is mirrored in the content of the spells and charms they use."

Historian Ronald Hutton noted that the low magic of the cunning folk was one of the lesser influences upon the development of the Neopagan religion of Wicca and related witchcraft-based groups in the early twentieth century. For instance, one of the pioneering English Neopagan Witches, Robert Cochrane, who would describe himself under such titles as "pellar" and who led a coven known as the Clan of Tubal Cain in the early 1960s, allegedly incorporated elements borrowed from the cunning craft in his tradition, known as Cochrane's Craft. Indeed, Shani Oates, one of his later followers, claimed that his tradition "preserves many elements of 19th century cunning and folk magics". Hutton however also noted that although many Neopagan witches consider themselves to be the heirs of the cunning people, they "have much more in common with the stereotypical images of witches in nineteenth-century popular culture; the very beings who were regarded as the natural enemies of the charmers and cunning people."

Historiography
Whilst the historian Keith Thomas had touched upon the subject of English popular magic in his Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971), in a 1994 article on the subject of the cunning folk, the historian Willem de Blécourt stated that the study of the subject, "properly speaking, has yet to start." These ideas were echoed in 1999, when the historian Ronald Hutton, in his The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, remarked that the study of the cunning folk and European folk magic was "notoriously, an area that has been comparatively neglected by academic scholars." Nonetheless, articles on the subject were published in the late 1990s, primarily by the historian Owen Davies, who in 2003 published Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History (which was later republished under the altered title of Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History in 2007). This was followed in 2005 with the publication of Emma Wilby's Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic, which took an attitude to the cunning craft somewhat different from those of Hutton and Davies, emphasising a spiritual dimension to the magic of the cunning folk complementary to - and underpinning - its more practical aspects.

There are also examples of academic studies into specific British cunning folk. In 1960, the folklorist Eric Maple published articles on two nineteenth-century cunning men in East Anglia, James Murrell and George Pickingill. In 2004, Jason Semmens published a study of a nineteenth-century Cornish cunning-woman as The Witch of the West: Or, The Strange and Wonderful History of Thomasine Blight.

title: Cunning folk in Britain


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User talk:Apei

Haidee Aquino

born in 1978, a graduate of University of the Philippines, now teaching in China as a NGO volunteer.

title: User talk:Apei


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Skjálfandafljót

The Skjálfandafljót River is situated in the north of Iceland. Skjálfandafljót is 178 km long, and is the fourth longest river of Iceland.

It has its source at the northwestern border of the icecap Vatnajökull on the Highlands of Iceland. From there it streams parallel to the Sprengisandur Highland road in a northern direction, flowing finally into Skjálfandi bay.

By following the river from its source at the Vatnajökull glacier all the way to the river mouth at Skjálfandi bay it's possible to see many waterfalls. Skjálfandafljót possesses a number of waterfalls, including Goðafoss. Other well-known waterfalls in Skjálfandafljót include Hrafnabjargafoss, Aldeyjarfoss, Barnafoss and Ullarfoss. 1

It was first descended by kayak by a team from the University of Sheffield (UK) in 1989.

At the north end of the Sprengisandur road, the river drops down 10m over Aldeyjarfoss. Goðafoss is in the lowlands, very near Route 1.

There have been proposals to build a hydroelectricity power station along the river.

title: Skjálfandafljót


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Kamala Markandaya

Kamala Markandaya (23 June 1924 – 16 May 2004), pseudonym of Kamala Purnaiya, married name Kamala Taylor, was a British Indian novelist and journalist. She has been called "one of the most important Indian novelists writing in English".

Early life
Markandaya was born into an upper-middle-class Deshastha Madhva Brahmin family. A native of Mysore, India, Markandaya was a graduate of Madras University, and afterwards published several short stories in Indian newspapers. After India declared its independence, Markandaya moved to Britain, though she still labelled herself an Indian expatriate long afterwards. Kamala was a descendant of diwan Purnaiya and was fluent in Kannada and Marathi.

Career
She was well-known for writing about culture clash between Indian urban and rural societies, Markandaya's first published novel, Nectar in a Sieve (1954), was a bestseller and cited as an American Library Association Notable Book in 1955. Her other novels include Some Inner Fury (1955), A Silence of Desire (1960), Possession (1963), A Handful of Rice (1966), The Coffer Dams (1969), The Nowhere Man (1972), Two Virgins (1973), The Golden Honeycomb (1977), and Pleasure City (1982). Her last novel, Bombay Tiger, was published posthumously (2008) by her daughter Kim Oliver. Her First Published Novel's Title "Nectar in a Sieve" (1954) had been taken from S.T. Coleridge's Poem "Work without Hope" - "Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live."

Death
Kamala Markandaya died aged 79 on 16 May 2004.

Works

 * Nectar in a Sieve, London: Putnam, New York: John Day, 1954
 * Some Inner Fury, London: Putnam, 1955, New York: John Day, 1956
 * A Silence of Desire, London: Putnam, New York: John Day, 1960
 * Possession; a novel, London: Putnam, New York: John Day, 1963
 * A Handful of Rice, London: Hamish Hamilton, New York: John Day, 1966
 * The Coffer Dams, London: Hamilton, New York: John Day, 1969
 * The Nowhere Man, New York: John Day, 1972, London: Allen Lane, 1973
 * Two Virgins, New York: John Day, 1973, London: Chatto & Windus, 1974
 * The Golden Honeycomb, London: Chatto & Windus, New York: Crowell, 1977
 * Pleasure City, London: Chatto & Windus, 1982. Published in the United States under the title Shalimar, New York: Harper & Row, 1982
 * Bombay Tiger, New Delhi: Penguin, 2008 (Posthumously published)

Literary criticism

 * Almeida, Rochelle. Originality and Imitation: Indianness in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2000.
 * Aror, Sudhir K. Multicultural Consciousness in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya. Authors press, 2011.
 * Jha, Rekha. The Novels of Kamala Markandaya and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: A Study in East-West Encounter. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1990.
 * Joseph, Margaret P. Kamala Markandaya, Indian Writers Series, N. Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1980.
 * Krishna Rao, A. V. The Indo-Anglian Novel and Changing Tradition: A Study of the Novels of Mulk Raj Anad, Kamala Markandaya, R.K. Narayan, Raja Rao, 1930–64. Mysore: 1972.
 * Parameswaran, Uma. Kamala Markandaya. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2000.
 * Shrivastava, Manish. "Conflicts of Sensibility in Kamala Markandaya's A Silence of Desire". Synthesis: Indian Journal of English Literature and Language. vol.1, no.1.
 * Singh, Indu. "The Feminist Approach in Kamala Markandaya's Novels with Special Reference to Nectar in a Sieve", Synthesis: Indian Journal of English Literature and Language, vol. 1, no. 1.

title: Kamala Markandaya


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Talk:Choreographer

comment
this page requires a major edit, many of the choreographrs are in the wrong catergory

Bremser, M. (Ed)(1999) Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Routledge. ISBN: 0415103649

Ohka- 08:21, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

suggestion
i would suggest that the choreographers are listed alpabetically and followed by the type of works they choreographed ie:

 * Jerome Robbins: (Modern ballet, Musical theatre)
 * Vaslav Nijinsky: (Modern ballet)
 * William Forsythe: (Post-structuralist ballet)
 * Robert Fosse: (Musical theatre)
 * Meryl Tankard: (contemporary dance)

Ohka- 17:50, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

IMO, this should be redirected to choreography, and the list moved to List of choreographers. Atomiktoaster 00:46, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Choreographer