The longest word in the English language

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

What is it?

I don't mean a word that has been contrived to have a bunch of shoehorned prefixes and suffixes.

I also don't mean chemical names which can likewise go on and on.

Also, no diseases, which can also be agglutinative.

(And, of course, not "flocci. . .ion." IMHO, it would not have any relevance if not for the sheer novelty of its length.)

[funneefarmer]

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (sp?)

:D

Sorry, just to tempting.

[mangeorge]

smiles. :) :)
Peace,
mangeorge

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Work like you don't need the money.....
Love like you've never been hurt.....
Dance like nobody's watching! ....(Paraphrased)

[Melatonin]

So I take it from your initial comments that
anti-dis-establish-ment-arian-ism
won't cut the mustard?

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Life is short. Make fun of it.

[SterlingNorth]

How would you define contrived.

What profession-specific words would you allow?

(Chemestry has already been struck.)

[Dalou]

I think the "$40 Word Of The Day Award" goes to Melatonin. Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest word in the English language that I know of.


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You can't save your face and your ass at the same time.

[aseymayo]

Sing with me now - if you say it loud enough you'll always sound precocious...

Shoot, I was all ready with the lung disease word when you banned it.

I'm assuming you're looking for the longest English word that might sneak its way into an everyday conversation, so you probably won't go for "antidisestab..." either.

How about uncharacteristically? It's 20 letters (antidisestab... is 28).

[Nickrz]

Aw, you just wanted to say "agglutinative."
Btw.. what's that mean?

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

Everyone's a comedian :).

I can't think off-hand of any other professions (like medical and chemical) that lend themselves to padding words together like German.

An example is "uniformitarianism." That is a bit contrived, but it is an accepted word--and it's actually USED. I would have just coined it as "uniformism," but nobody axed me.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

Aseymayo's is a winner so far.

"Agglutinative" means that it agglutinates.

[MrKnowItAll]

According to my Guiness' BOWR (86 ed), "floccipaucinihilipilification" (29 letters) is the longest word in the OED. If it's good enough for the OED, I'm not going to question it.

It also lists two words that may be the longest in common use: "interdenominationalism" (22), "disproportionableness" (21), and "incomprehensibilities" (21). It also goes on to say that "interdenominationalistically" (28) may be considered "permissable".

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sigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsigsig

[Seraphim]

My Guinness 1998 sez:

The longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which has 45 letters and means "a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust.

My Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary also lists a thousand letter chemical compound, but I'll be DAMNED before I type that sucker in.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

Apparently I need to update my OED. That lung disease is not listed.

It still wasn't what I was looking for, as I had mentioned in the previous posts.

MrKnowItAll has the correct answers, I think.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

Mr KIA,

Yeah, I'm aware of "flocci"--AFAIK it's a made-up word from Eton.

I think the other words you cited were the winners.

I don't look at the OED as the ultimate source for whether a word is real or not, since language has an ongoing evolution. I look at it more as the record for every word that has ever been printed in the English language, regardless of its credibility--which I like, and I refer to it constantly for that reason.

BTW, you probably already know this, but it also lists about 100 words ending in "-gry."

Thanks for your input. I knew that Guinness had mentioned "flocci" and the lung disease in the past, but had forgotten that it also listed the longest words that are actually used. Shoulda read it before posting.

[NanoByte]

Seraphim:

You could probably get Satan to type that chemical name in.

How about:


. . . . . . . . .r e
. . . . . . . . o. .c
. . . . . . . . s. .u
. . . . . . . . . r

Ray

[John W. Kennedy]

A) I have used antidisestablishmentarianism. The word comes up quite legitimately when discussing church/state relations in England.

B) That "pneumoultra..." word is a hoax. Yes, I know it's in some real dictionaries -- the more fools they. It was intentionally created as a hoax to see if dictionary editors would bite.

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John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams

[neuro-trash grrrl]

How about "Praetertranssubstantiationalistically" (37 letters)? It means "In the manner of something that transcends or goes beyond the transsubstantiation of Christ's body and blood into bread and wine." Or is that too agglutinative for you?

[Kaje]

This has little or no bearing on the discussion, but at the mention of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious I have to tell a joke:
Mohandas K. Gandhi, the well known "Mohatma" was known to walk very long distances in his non-violent quest for Indian independence. However, he refused to wear British made shoes as part of his boycott. For this reason, his feet were extremely callous.
In addition, due to his occassional fasting, he was somewhat weakened and fragile.
His diet when he was not fasting consisted, as do the diets of many in the region, heavily of foods with a pungent aroma.

Therefore, it can be said that Gandhi was a super-calloused fragilistic man with halitosis.

bah dum ching! I love it! If anybody slaps me with being non P.C. or misdiagnosing halitosis I will kill you.

;)

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The only thing a nonconformist hates more than a conformist is another nonconformist who does not conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

"Establishmentarianism" is legitimate. That and the ones MKIA cited earlier I think take the prize. Padding it with the other prefixes, while technically do make up a new word, it's not one that would be considered a non-contrived word.

"Flocci" is IMHO a pun of sorts--create a very large word composed of various Latin diminutives (whose exact meanings I don't RC). Hence you create something very large out of a bunch of nothing.

Neuro: Yes.

Kaje: Bah Dum CHING! and welcome.

[MrKnowItAll]

Hey, JWKennedy. The claim that "pneumoultra-yaddayaddayadda" is a hoax is interesting. Where'd you hear it?

I would visit the "A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia" web page, in particular these sections:
http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words11.html

http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words12.html

http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words13.html

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Jacques Kilchoer
Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

MKIA:

AFAIK, the lung disease was created for a specific dictionary, and doesn't appear anywhere in medical literature.

That's what I've heard--could be another UL.

[Polycarp]

Hey, when we discuss 19th Century Church of England history, we use "antidisestablishmentarianism" all the time!! ;)

[tracer]

So, polycarp, are you saying some of the people in the 19th Century Church of England behaved Antidisestablismentarianistically? (34 letters, ha!)

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Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.

[metroshane]

i've got a (possible dumb) question. there are scientist that speak different languages, so all those long medical terms....how do you say them in chinese,et al? not all of them are latin based.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

I only know a couple:

In Chinese
Hernia is "Won Hung Lo"
Tinnitus is "Yu Rang"

Uncontrollable libido in Hawaiian is "Kamonna Wanna Laya"

[Boris B]

I think it's perfectly kosher to import medical and scientific words into pretty much any language, untranslated. Sometimes the word will be pronounced slightly differently, and often transliterated. Transliteration should be pretty doable for phonetic alphabets like the Japanese kanas and Arabic. It seems like it would nearly impossible in Chinese, so I bet they just write the word in next to all their ordinary Chinese characters.

This wouldn't apply to medical and scientific words that exist in the language before their exposure to English or Latin or wherever the new word came from. It's easy to translate "acquired immune deficiency syndrome" into any language, so they probably do that (and give it the appropriate acronym?).

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

Just a WAG about how they do it in Chinese is that they describe the disease, so something like "adrenoleukodystrophy" might be translated as "genetic nerve-sheath deterioration disease."

In Spanish, for example, "bazooka" (OK, not a medical term) translated at one time to "portable anti-tank weapon."

It's easy to translate "acquired immune deficiency syndrome" into any language, so they probably do that (and give it the appropriate acronym?).

In french:
syndrome d'immunodéficience acquise
or SIDA

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Jacques Kilchoer
Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

[John W. Kennedy]

I don't recall offhand where I saw the account of "pneumoultra..." being a hoax, but it was quite circumstantial and from a reliable source (maybe even Cecil).

But I would add that as a word it's all wrong -- it's odd bits of Latin, Greek and English jammed up together in a way that a real scientist trying to create the word wouldn't have done.

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John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams