Longest word in English (or Welsh for that matter :-) )

Re: What does antidisestablishmentarianism mean?

I thought every grade-school kiddie knew what it meant :dubious: in addition to how to spell it. I did.

Would this word be more common knowledge in England?

How about Wales?

Perhaps not, but you’ll certainly find many Welsh towns with names like that.

Such as the idylic Welsh hill Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateahaumaitawhitiurehaea-
turipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.

That doesn’t have one single “l” in it (let alone a double-“ll”)! What kind of Welsh is that? Chemical names of amino acid chains are more Welsh than that! :smiley:

“Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateahaumaitawhitiurehaeaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu” is Maori, not Welsh.

But Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is most certainly Welsh. Lllook at allll those "Llll"s!

According to our friend Wiki, the Welsh entrant is 2nd place behind the New Zealand (Maori) one, in terms of place name length.

Names deliberately made up to be long names seem to me to not be very interesting.

How about this Welsh place-name then?

Teekalesiasaintaseriorotoiteateatengaotearamonamaetataanaiteripotauiuiotehahiosainttysiliokiteanawhero

Speak for yourself. What it lacks in organic accidentialty (I just made that up too), it makes up for in… Welshness? Walesity? I can’t make up a word that works here. :smiley:

“Llanfairpwllgwyngyll” is legitimate. The rest was a publicity stunt.

Sllllyght ymprovement, dyspllllllllllayyng two ynstances of the lllllletter “l”,
and not consecutyve eyther. Stylllll not very Wellllllsh llllllookyng.
Are you sure thys ysn’t Maori alllllllllso?

It says quite clearly the Welsh name

St Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave

Hahi St Mary o roto i te ateatenga o te aramona ma e tata ana ki te ripo tere, me te hahi o St Tysilio o te ana whero

aka

Eglwys y Santes Fair yn y pant y cyll gwyn ger y trobwll cyflym ac eglwys Sant Tysilio yr ogof goch

Neither of which seem to have much to do with

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

The problem of “publicity stunt” synthesized long words isn’t restricted to placenames.

The long-running (arguably, now superseded) “canonical” long word, pneumonomicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, appears also to have been created for that purpose. Some parts are redundant and apparently spliced on to make the word longer. I believe there aren’t any meaningful characteristics of that illness to distinguish it from the more common name “silicosis”.

Apparently, the word was synthesized specifically to be a “longest word in the dictionary” in 1935.

There’s always
floccinaucinihilipilification

Oh, yeah, “pneumo…” is entirely bogus. Even as a high-school student, I could see that.

My final bid on a long placename in Welsh - with double ells.

Yr uwchgynhadledd lle chwaraeodd Tamatea, dyn y gliniau mawr, y llithrydd, dringwr mynyddoedd, y tir-llyncwr a deithiodd am, ei ffliwt trwyn i ei hanwylyd

… just a second !!! there were spaces in that - does that make it multiple words ??

Only when not when spoken by an excited Welshman.

Except that it doesn’t actually exist.

Yes it does. See 40°21’00.00" S 176°33’00.00" E

I gave the name of the place in Welsh.

Looking at those coordinates in Google Maps, it appears to be somewhere in New Zealand:

662 Wimbledon Rd
Porangahau 4292
New Zealand

If the name is as above, why would you give the name in Welsh? That’s not the actual place name, is it?
ETA: Translation of Welsh gives us this:

The summit where he played Tamatea , the man big knees , the slider , mountain climber , land - llyncwr traveled about , his nose flute to his loved one

And straight googling that place name, the only mention I could find was this thread. Now, it’s entirely possible that my Google-Fu has failed me. But it doesn’t even remotely look Welsh, either.