Longest word in English

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The longest word in English depends upon the definition of what constitutes an English word. English allows new words to be formed by construction; long words are coined; place names may be considered words; technical terms may be arbitrarily long. Length can be in terms of orthography and number of written letters or phonology and the number of phonemes.

Contents 1 Major dictionaries 2 Coinages 3 Constructions 4 Technical terms 5 Place names 6 Scrabble 7 Words with certain characteristics of notable length 8 Middle Ages 9 Joke/puzzle 10 See also 11 Notes

[edit] Major dictionaries

The longest word in any major English language dictionary is pneumono­ultra­micro­scopic­silico­volcano­coniosis, a 45-letter word supposed to refer to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of volcanic ash, but research has discovered that this word was originally intended as a hoax. It has since been used in a close approximation of its originally intended meaning, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim.^[1]

The Oxford English Dictionary contains pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters).

The longest non-technical word is flocci­nauci­nihili­pili­fication at 29 letters. Consisting of a series of Latin words meaning "nothing" and defined as "the act of estimating something as worthless," its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741.^[2][3][4] In recent times its usage has been recorded in the proceedings of the United States Senate by Senator Robert Byrd ^[5], and at the White House by Bill Clinton's press secretary Mike McCurry, albeit sarcastically.^[6]

Anti­dis­establishment­arianism (a nineteenth century movement in England opposed to the separation of church and state) at 28 letters is still in colloquial currency for being one of the longest words in the English language.

The longest word which appears in William Shakespeare's works is the 27-letter honorific­abilitud­initatibus, appearing in Love's Labour's Lost. This is arguably an English word (rather than Latin), but only because it was Shakespeare who used it.

The humuhumu-nukunuku-a-pua‘a, or reef triggerfish, is Hawaii's official state fish.^[7] At 22 letters (including the okina) it is one of the best known very long one-word names for an animal. It is occasionally quipped that the name is longer than the fish.

Although only fourteen letters long, sesquipedalian deserves a mention. It is derived from a nonce word used by the Roman author Horace, in his work Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry). The quote is as follows: "Proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba," which means, "He throws aside his paint pots and his words that are a foot and a half long." The Oxford English Dictionary lists sesquipedalianism ("the practice of using words one and a half feet long"), and further derivations can be created as described in the Constructions section below.

[edit] Coinages

In his play Ecclesiazousae ("The Assemblywomen"), the ancient Greek comedic playwright Aristophanes created: Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphio-paraomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonop-tekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon, a word of 183 letters that describes a dish by stringing together its ingredients.

James Joyce made up nine 100 and one 101-letter words in his novel Finnegans Wake, the most famous of which is Bababadal­gharagh­takammin­arronn­konn­bronn­tonn­erronn­tuonn­thunn­trovarrhoun­awnskawn­toohoo­hoordenen­thurnuk. Appearing on the first page, it allegedly represents the symbolic thunderclap associated with the fall of Adam and Eve. As it appears nowhere else except in this passage, it is generally not accepted as a real word. Sylvia Plath made mention of it in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, when Esther Greenwood, the protagonist, was reading Finnegans Wake.

The writer Cory Brait's short story "Worduliscious" contains Anteantimacabrecantysobradoraflanxadoxicalloussousphliacs, which was said in the book to have a vague meaning of before the people against loving things that don't make sense. ^[8]

Mark McShane's Untimely Ripped (1963) contains praetertranssubstantiationalistically (37 letters).^[9]

The well-known song title from the movie Mary Poppins, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", with 34 letters, does appear in several dictionaries, but only as a proper noun defined in reference to the song title. Hence, it can be dismissed as an unreal word, particularly since the song assigns no meaning to it other than to say that it's impressive. The idea and invention of the word is credited to songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman.

In the 1970s, there were Pepsi advertisements for Lip­smackin­thirst­quenchin­acetastin­motivatin­good­buzzin­cool­talkin­high­walkin­fast­livin­ever­givin­cool­fizzin, coining a 100-letter but several-word term.

In 1975, the 71-letter (but also several-word) advertising jingle,Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun was first used in a McDonald's Restaurant advertisement to describe the Big Mac. ^[10]

The character Big Bird of Sesame Street sings the Latin alphabet, thinking it is a word. He reads abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz aloud as /æbkədɛfgiʤɛkl̩mn̩ɔpkwɝːˈstuːvwɪksɪz/ and breaks into song (ABC-DEF-GHI).

Henry Carey's farce Chrononhotonthologos (1743) holds the opening line: "Aldiborontiphoscophornio! Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?"

[edit] Constructions

English is a language which permits the legitimate extension of existing words to serve new purposes by the addition of prefixes and suffixes. This is sometimes referred to as agglutinative construction. This process can create arbitrarily long words: for example, the prefixes pseudo- (false, spurious) and anti- (against, opposed to) can be added as many times as desired. A word like anti-aircraft (pertaining to the defense against aircraft) is easily extended to anti-anti-aircraft (pertaining to counteracting the defense against aircraft, a legitimate concept) and can from there be prefixed with an endless stream of "anti-"s, each time creating a new level of counteraction. More familiarly, the addition of numerous "great"s to a relative, e.g. great-great-great-grandfather, can produce words of arbitrary length.

"Antidisestablishmentarianism" is the longest common example of a word formed by agglutinative construction, as follows:

establish

to set up, put in place, or institute (originally from the Latin stāre, to stand)

dis-establish

ending the established status of a body, in particular a church, given such status by law, such as the Church of England

disestablish-ment

the separation of church and state (specifically in this context it is the political movement of the 1860s in Britain)

anti-disestablishment

opposition to disestablishment

antidisestablishment-arian

an advocate of opposition to disestablishment (alternatively, but less likely and quite similar in meaning, "opposed to disestablishmentarians", depending on what "anti-" is taken to belong to)

antidisestablishmentarian-ism

the movement or ideology of advocates of opposition to disestablishment; the movement or ideology that opposes disestablishment

Of course, the process need not stop there: prefixes like neo- and contra- can be added, or -istically can be used in place of -ism to tie "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" above. Given that there is essentially no limit to their length, it is dubious whether any of them can lay a claim to being the "longest" word.

[edit] Technical terms

A number of scientific naming schemes can be used to generate arbitrarily long words.

Gammaracanthuskytodermogammarus loricatobaicalensis is sometimes cited as the longest binomial name—it is a kind of amphipod. However, this name, proposed by B. Dybowski, was invalidated by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic, describing the spa waters at Bath, England, is attributed to Dr Edward Strother (1675-1737)^[11]. The word is composed of the following elements:

• Aequeo: equal (Latin, aequo[2])
• Salino: containing salt (Latin, salīnus)
• Calcalino: calcium (Latin, calx)
• Ceraceo: "waxy" (Latin, cera)
• Aluminoso: alumina (Latin)
• Cupreo: from Copper
• Vitriolic: containing vitriol (in this case Copper sulphate pentahydrate)

John Horton Conway and Landon Curt Noll developed an open-ended system for naming powers of 10, in which one sex­millia­quingent­sexagint­illion, coming from the Latin name for 6560, is the name for 10^3(6560+1) = 10¹⁹⁶⁸³. In British usage, it would be 10^6(6560) = 10³⁹³⁶⁰.

Names of chemical compounds can be extremely long if written as one word, which is sometimes done. An example of this is sodium­meta­diamino­para­dioxy­arseno­benzoe­methylene­sulph­oxylate, an arsenic-containing drug. There are also other chemical naming systems, using numbers instead of "meta", "para" etc. as descriptive dividers, breaking up the name, which then no longer can be considered a single long word. One example is a chemical term that has 1,185 letters, it refers to a Tobacco Virus.

The IUPAC nomenclature for organic chemical compounds is open-ended, giving rise to the 189,819-letter chemical name Methionylthreonylthreonyl...isoleucine, the shortened version of a protein also known as titin, or sometimes connectin, which is involved in striated muscle formation. Its chemical formula is C₁₃₂₉₈₃H₂₁₁₈₆₁N₃₆₁₄₉O₄₀₈₈₃S₆₉₃.^[12]

British science writer Brian J. Ford published the most polysyllabic book title (popularly known, for short, simply as Nonscience) in 1971. It is a satire on those who delude the public with unnecessarily complex lengthy terms.

[edit] Place names

The longest place name in the world spelled in English is Krungthepmahanakornamornratanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilokphopnopparatrajathaniburiromudomrajaniwesmahasatharnamornphimar- navatarnsathitsakkattiyavisanukamprasit in Thailand, although it is more commonly known as Bangkok.

There is some debate as to whether a place name is a legitimate word. However, the longest officially recognized place name in an English-speaking country is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu (85 letters) which is a hill in New Zealand.

The longest place name in the United States (45 letters) is Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, a lake in Webster, Massachusetts. This is incorrectly said to be Algonquin for "you fish your side of the water, I fish my side of the water, nobody fishes the middle". It actually means "Englishmen at Manchaug at the Fishing Place at the Boundary". The lake is known to Americans as Webster Lake. The longest hyphenated names in the U.S. are Winchester-on-the-Severn, a town in Maryland, and Washington-on-the-Brazos, a notable place in Texas history.

The 58 character name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the famous name of a town on Anglesey an island in Wales, Great Britain. This place's name is actually 51 letters long, as certain character groups in Welsh are considered as one letter, for instance ll, ng and ch. It is generally agreed, however, that this invented name, adopted in the mid-19th century, was contrived solely to be the longest name of any town in Britain. The official name of the place is Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll, commonly abbreviated to Llanfairpwll or the somewhat jocular Llanfair PG. The longest station name in the UK, at 68 letters, is also in Wales: Gorsafawddacha'idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion was specifically contrived to "beat" Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.

In Ireland, the longest English placename at 22 letters is Muckanaghederdauhaulia (from the Irish language, Muiceanach Idir Dhá Sháile, meaning pig-marsh between two saltwater inlets) in County Galway. If this is disallowed for being derived from Irish, or not a town, the longest at 19 letters is Newtownmountkennedy in County Wicklow.

It is questionable whether any of the above (with the exception of New­town­mount­kennedy) are properly considered English words, being derived from Māori, Nipmuck, Welsh and Irish words respectively, or being a conjunction of individual English words.

See also: List of short place names

[edit] Scrabble

The longest technically legal Scrabble word in North American play is ethyl­enediamine­tetra­acetates (28 letters). It is the plural of a word found in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, which was the dictionary of reference in North American Scrabble play for base words of at least 10 letters, and their inflections of at least 10 letters, until June 16, 2003. Naturally, this 15-letter plus word is 'legal' in name only, since it can never be used in a game for the very simple reason that it would not fit on the board. There are many 15-letter words; the highest-scoring word on a Scrabble board is oxyphenbutazone (1458 points) when played across a set of three triple word scores. Arguably, however, higher scoring at 1674 points is sesquioxidizing (which scores 62 in its own right, but considerably higher when tripled three times - and possibly using other premium squares). This word does not exist in its own right in places like Webster's dictionary; however the roots of the word, sesquioxide and oxidizing, do. For words that exist in other dictionaries, benzoxycamphors scores 59 before inflation.^[13]

[edit] Words with certain characteristics of notable length

The longest word in the English language containing only one vowel is strengths, while scraunched is the longest monosyllabic word in current usage. Twyndyllyngs is the longest word without any of the common vowel letters a, e, i, o, or u (although y functions as a vowel in this word). Euouae, at six letters long, is the longest English word consisting only of vowels, and the word with the most consecutive vowels. It is a medieval musical term. However, u was often used interchangeably with v, and the variant "evovae" is occasionally used.

The longest words with no repeated letters are dermatoglyphics, misconjugatedly and uncopyrightables. ^[14]

The longest word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops, a grass genus. The seven-letter addeems (from the archaic verb addeem, meaning to award), alloquy (an archaic or literary word for an address), beefily (in a beefy manner), billowy (like a wave or surge), dikkops (a South African bird) and gimmors (plural of gimmor, an old-fashioned word for a mechanical contrivance) are also close.

The longest word typable with only the left hand (using conventional hand placement on a QWERTY keyboard) is tesseradecades, aftercataracts, or the more common but sometimes hyphenated sweaterdresses. Conversely, using the right hand alone, the longest word that can be typed is johnny-jump-up, or, excluding hyphens, hypolimnion. The longest word typable using only the top row of letters is not typewriter, as is commonly believed: teetertotter is longer, though sometimes hyphenated. The longest words typable by alternating left and right hands are antiskepticism and leucocytozoans respectively. ^[15]

The longest word with the vowels in order is abstemiously, although arseniously and facetiously are close.

[edit] Middle Ages

Ornicopythebibliopsychocrystarroscioaerogenethliometeoroaustrohieroanthropoichthyopyrosiderochpnomyoalectryoopiobotanopegobydrorhabdocrithoaleuroalphitohalomolybdoclerobe- loaxinocoscinodactyliogeolithopessopsephocatoptrotephraoneirochiroonychodactyloarithstichooxogeloscogastrogyrocerobletonooenosapulinaiac, is a 309-letter word used in the middle ages. It was used to describe someone who could predict the future. A nine-year old named Aaron Zweig spelled this word by memory with no mistakes in front of his teacher. ^[16]

[edit] Joke/puzzle

Q: What is the longest word in the English language?

A: "Smiles", because there is a full mile between the first and last letters.

A: No, it is "Beleaguered", because there is a full league inside.

[edit] See also

• English words with uncommon properties
• One-letter English words
• Two-letter English words
• List of the longest English words with one syllable
• Number of words in English
• Scriptio continua
• Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft (longest published word in German)

[edit] Notes