# Longest word in a phone...? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 8, 2002, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328 "2002-10-08T07:59:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Aro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Aro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2002, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/1 "2002-10-08T07:59:54Z")
Someone asked me this question yesterday… **What is the longest word that can be typed in (on a phone pad) by pressing each of the keys only once?** (any order) Should probably be an 8-letter word. I have one answer, so far… **adroitly**. I am wondering if there are many others…thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Aro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Aro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aro)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2002, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/2 "2002-10-10T15:54:55Z")
::bump:: Does no one have another 8-letter word that can be typed by pressing each key only once? Come on!😛 ---
**Author:** ![njufoic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/278dde/32.png) [@njufoic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njufoic)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/3 "2002-10-11T01:47:16Z")
Aro- You may have a genuine stumper here. I just tried about 15 permutations of the 8 digits at [phonespell](http://www.phonespell.org) and I couldn’t come up with anything other than **adroitly**. Of course, there are 8 factorial permutations of the digits, so I haven’t tried nearly all of them yet 😉 -Andrew L ---
**Author:** ![Omphaloskeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bcef8e/32.png) [@Omphaloskeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omphaloskeptic)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/4 "2002-10-11T02:08:35Z")
A few more aredilatory, idolatry, enthalpy, unfairly, playtime. (There are several others.) If you allow QZ on 1, there’s also the 9-letter hazelwort. ---
**Author:** ![Aro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Aro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aro)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/5 "2002-10-11T07:55:25Z")
Great answer **Ompha**. Thanks a lot. (Glad I bumped this now!) (BTW, my phone doesn’t have the QZ on 1, but the Q on 7 and the Z on 9) ---
**Author:** ![ShadowWarrior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7993a0/32.png) [@ShadowWarrior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShadowWarrior)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/6 "2002-10-11T12:56:45Z")
my phone has the following letters: 2 ABC 3 DEF 4 GHI 5 JKL 6 MNO 7 PQRS 8 TUV 9 WXYZ and, by my calculations, there are 40,320 unique 8-digit numbers which do not include 0 or 1. There are 11,664 possible ‘words’ per number, which makes a staggering 470,292,480 phone ‘words’ - well, letter combinations, really. I can limit this slightly by removing letter combinations that do not include vowels (or Y) this means that each unique 8-digit number has 2,417 ‘words’, which makes 97,453,440 total words. being both a programmer and slightly insane, I have spent a while creating a program that can generate these numbers, and convert them to words. my original plan was to stick these words in a word processor, and remove everything that didn’t spellcheck, thus leaving a comlpete list of all possible words. Unfortuantely it keeps crashing (probably out of memory) so we may never know … ---
**Author:** ![ShadowWarrior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7993a0/32.png) [@ShadowWarrior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShadowWarrior)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/7 "2002-10-11T12:57:58Z")
I have, however, now got a listing of every unique (as defined in OP) 8-digit number - if anybocy would like this list, to perform their own calculations on, they are welcome to it! ---
**Author:** ![Aro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b3f665/32.png) [@Aro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aro)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/8 "2002-10-11T13:02:39Z")
**Wow.** That’s quite, quite brilliant, and probably just a little bit mad too. 😉 I never expected anyone to go so far (or to care much at all about this really). Cheers… ---
**Author:** ![ShadowWarrior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7993a0/32.png) [@ShadowWarrior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShadowWarrior)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/9 "2002-10-11T13:32:14Z")
well, I’m just sitting here at work, being bored - sounded like an interesting programming challenge to take my off the stuff I’m meant to be programming… 😃 Also, you’re the only person other than me that I’ve seen who writes it ‘Norn Iron’. my dad’s from there, and I’ve always written it that way! You’ll be delighted to know that the number to word conversion process now seems to be working, and is gradually churning out results… now I just have to find a way to eliminate the non-words! ---
**Author:** ![Omphaloskeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bcef8e/32.png) [@Omphaloskeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omphaloskeptic)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2002, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/10 "2002-10-11T21:49:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ShadowWarrior \* > \*\*being both a programmer and slightly insane, I have spent a while creating a program that can generate these numbers, and convert them to words. my original plan was to stick these words in a word processor, and remove everything that didn’t spellcheck, thus leaving a comlpete list of all possible words. Unfortuantely it keeps crashing (probably out of memory) so we may never know … \*\* The technique I used was basically the reverse of this. I started with a text wordlist and looked for 8-letter words containing one of (A,B,C), one of (D,E,F), etc., using awk and egrep. ---
**Author:** ![Opus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/858c86/32.png) [@Opus1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Opus1)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2002, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/longest-word-in-a-phone/131328/11 "2002-10-12T00:58:29Z")
A search using Lexpert reveals that there are exactly 30 eight letter words that can be spelled in this manner, of which 10-15 are ‘common’ depending on how you define that. I’ll list them all in the spoiler box below: ADROITLY BLOWIEST CRYOLITE DICOTYLS DILATORY ENTHALPY EPICOTYL FOXTAILS GUNWALES HAYLOFTS IDOLATRY INTERLAY KEYPUNCH KNITWEAR KYANITES LAUWINES LIPOCYTE PENALITY PLAYTIME SODALITY STEAMILY TALEYSIM TENSIBLY TWANGLER TWANGLES TWANKIES UNEASILY UNFAIRLY UNFLASHY WATERLOG