As Rotary member Neil Anderson passed out dictionaries to Lodi third graders Thursday, the students shouted a variety of guesses as to how many letters are in the longest English word.

“20. … 100. … 500,” they said.

Lodi Rotary on Thursday distributed 2,400 dictionaries to all the third grade students in Lodi Unified School District. The project was done at the suggestion of Rotary member Bill Huyett, LUSD superintendent.

The children in third grade classes at Borchardt Elementary gasped as Anderson told them how many letters were in the longest word: 1,909. It is a scientific term.

Then Anderson shared a long word, well-known by many of the children: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

“What does it mean?” a boy asked.

“It’s the word you say when you don’t know what to say,” Anderson replied.

The third-graders clapped and quietly cheered as Anderson handed out the dictionaries. He noted features other than words in “A Student’s Dictionary” such as metric conversion tables, the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence and a listing of presidents.

He asked the students what word they wanted him to look up.

“Bonjourno,” one boy said. Unfortunately, that wasn’t in the dictionary.

Anderson picked a page and asked, “Do any of you know what the word ‘generalize’ means? … To make a broad statement.

“I generalize that all of you are children,” he said.

Principal Janis Morehead was pleased with the dictionary distribution. Her school has 101 third-grade students.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “The kids are at the point where they’re going to start writing essays. Now they have a tool.”

Contact reporter Jennifer Snyder at jennifers@lodinews.com.