Biggest word in english vocabulary

The biggest word in the English language is 189,819 letters long, and takes three hours to pronounce! More commonly used big words are several syllables long, and often make people feel smart when they say them out loud. Somewhat ironically, however, study after study has shown that using big words usually makes people sound dumb.

There is a time and a place for big words. If you’re a writer, you might want to be careful about how often you invoke long words that no one has ever heard of before. Mark Twain has a few good quotes about why writers should be economical and precise:

“Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

With that said, below is a list of some of the biggest words in the English language, which you can choose to ignore, or insert into your writing and vocabulary. Remember, sometimes, a big word works better. Try to insert a new word into your vocabulary every day until you’re able to use them naturally, without thinking about it. Here are some big words that you can use to sound smart around your family and friends, along with their meaning so you use them in the correct way:

1. Abstentious

Self-restraining; also the longest word in the English language to use all five vowels in order once

2. Accoutrements

trappings, esp. related to apparel

3. Acumen — ability, skill

4. Anachronistic — a story that didn’t actually happen

5. Anagnorisis — the moment in a story when the main character realizes something that leads to a resolution

6. Anomalist — difficult to classify

8. Apropos — appropriate

9. Arid — dry

10. Assiduous — painstaking; taking great care through hard work

11. Auspicious — signaling a positive future

Big Words (B-C)

12. Behoove — something that is a personal duty

13. Bellwether — the first sheep in a flock, wearing a bell around its neck

14. Callipygian — having large, round, succulent buttocks

15. Circumlocution —the act of using too many words

16. Consanguineous — of the same blood or same ancestor

17. Conviviality — friendliness

18. Coruscant — sparkling

19. Cuddlesome — cuddly

20. Cupidity — greed

21. Cwtch — from the Welsh word for “hiding place”; the longest word in English to be entirely composed of consonants

22. Cynosure — center of attention

Big Words (D)

23. Deleterious — harmful

24. Desideratum — something needed or wanted

Big Words (E)

26. Enervating — exhausting

27. Equanimity — level-headedness

28. Euouae — a medieval musical term; the longest word in a major dictionary entirely composed of vowels

29. Excogitate — to plan

Big Words (F)

31. Florid — red and inflamed

32. Fortuitous — lucky

33. Frugal — cheap, thrifty

Big Words (G-M)

34. Gasconading — bragging

35. Grandiloquent — verbally pompous

36. Hackneyed — clichéd

37. Honorificabilitudinitatibus — an extremely long-winded way to say “honorable”; at 27 letters, the longest word in the work of William Shakespeare; also the longest word in the English language featuring alternating consonants and vowels

38. Idiosyncratic — peculiar

39. Indubitably — without a doubt

40. Ivoriate — to cover in ivory

41. Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypo…pterygon — (ellipsis used because the word is 182 letters long) an elaborate fricassee; coined word that appeared in the play Assemblywomen by Aristophanes

42. Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl…isoleucine … the chemical name for titin, the largest known protein; ellipsis used because at 189,819 letters, it’s the largest known word and takes over three hours to pronounce

43. Milieu — environment

Big Words (N-P)

44. Nidificate — to build a nest

45. Nonchalant — carefree and unbothered

46. Osculator — one who loves or is loved

47. Paradigm — model

48. Parastratiosphecomyiastratiosphecomyiodes — a species of fly native to Thailand

49. Parsimonious — cheap

50. Penultimate — second to last

51. Perfidious — treacherous

52. Perspicacious — perceptive

54. Proficuous — profitable

55. Predilection — preference

56. Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism — an inherited thyroid disorder

57. Psychotomimetic – inducing psychotic alteration of behavior and personality

Big Words (Q-Z)

58. Querulous — fussy

59 Rancorous — bitter and argumentative

60. Remunerative — lucrative

61. Rotavator — a soil tiller; at 9 letters, the longest palindromic word in the English language (i.e., it’s spelled the same way backwards)

62. Saxicolous — something that lives on rocks

63. Sesquipedalian — involving long words, just like this article

64. Splendiferous — wonderful

65. Squirrelled — put away; the longest one-syllable word in the English language

67. Supercilious — when a person is arrogant

68. Synergy — extra energy generated by cooperation

69. Unencumbered — free

70. Unparagoned — without equal

71. Winebibber — an alcoholic  —

We’ve all been there: trying to pronounce chemical names on the back of a shampoo bottle. No surprise one of the longest words in English is the chemical name for the human titin protein.

One of the longest Englishwords has over 180,000 letters. Spelling it would take 57 pages, so we won’t drag it out here. With that said, there are plenty of other big words in the English language. So, we’ve listed some of them using much smaller words in this article.

Main Longest Words in English Takeaways:

• The average English word has 4.5 letters.
• Many of the longest words in English are scientific or medical terms.
• Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis has 45 letters.
• Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism has 30 letters.
• Prefixes and compounds can increase word length.

In this article, we’ve compiled some of the longest words for anyone who appreciates the English language. So, prepare yourself because your vocabulary is about to get much bigger—pun intended.

How Long is the Average Word?

Before we discuss big words, let’s start with some basics. The average English word contains 4.5 letters. The longest words in English dictionaries have significantly more letters than that.

Nearly 60% of English words have at least one ‘e’ in them. ‘T’ comes in second, as it appears in 47.3% of words. Meanwhile, ‘Z’ finds a home in just 0.3% of words, with ‘q’ not far behind at 0.5%.

Why are Some Words So Long?

We often see a word with lots of letters and wonder what happened. Why would anyone create such a long word? Technically, some word formation rules result in big words. For instance, Long words often contain multiple prefixes or compound terms.

“Great” is a prefix that can significantly alter the length of a word. Genetics aside, you can use “great” as many times as you want for family titles. Make sure to use hyphens in between the “great” prefixes, and not commas.

Compound words can also get long. This is especially true when writers hyphenate adjectives. These words can easily become three- or four-word compounds.

Three-Word Hyphenated Compounds

• Do-it-yourself
• Salt-and-pepper
• Remote-robot-assisted
• New-and-improved

Four-Word Hyphenated Compounds

• Run-of-the-mill
• State-of-the-art
• Too-big-to-fail
• Chocolate-chip-milkshake-loving

You may have seen even longer compounds than these. For example, perhaps you viewed a blink-and-you-missed-it theatrical run.

What’s the Longest English Word?

The longest word in the English language has 189,819 letters. We’d love to share it, but it’s 57 pages long, which means a lot of scrolling! So, the word we’re talking about here refers to a chemical compound called titin. For the uninitiated, titin is a human protein found in our vertebral muscle.

Titin’s official term is 189,819 words because it follows traditional protein-naming guidelines. Proteins’ names are typically derived from their contributing chemicals. Titin has a lengthy chemical list.

Fun fact:It would take 3.5 hours to say the official name for titin out loud.

Some lexicographers consider titin a verbal formula rather than an official word. Lexicographers are the language experts who help create dictionaries. Traditional dictionaries don’t have room for lengthy words such as the scientific term for titin.

What are Some of the Longest Words in English?

Many big words are scientific or medical terms. Normally, scientists combine several ingredients and traits to form these scientific terms. Meanwhile, medical terms often contain prefixes and suffixes.

Most of us don’t have hours to pronounce the scientific term for titin. However, you can impress your friends with these long words:

1. lopado­temacho­selacho­galeo­kranio­leipsano­drim­hypo­trimmato­silphio­parao­melito­katakechy­meno­kichl­epi­kossypho­phatto­perister­alektryon­opte­kephallio­kigklo­peleio­lagoio­siraio­baphe­tragano­pterygon (182 letters) – a fictional meal referenced in Assemblywomen, a comedy by Aristophanes.

2. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters) – a synonym for silicosis. Silicosis is a lung disease caused by inhaling silica. It’s also the longest word that you’ll find in most well-known dictionaries.

3. supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (34 letters) – a nonsense word featured in Mary Poppins. Admit it: You sang this word rather than read it.

4. pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters) – a genetic medical condition similar to pseudohypoparathyroidism.

5. floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters) – the act of finding something worthless or without value. Finally, a nontechnical word on our list!

6. antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters) – a political stance that opposes disestablishment. While many people assume antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest word in the English language, it’s not. In fact, it has 12 syllables only.

7. honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters) – with honorableness. This is an interesting word because it alternates consonants and vowels.

Why are Scientific Words So Long?

Maybe you have noticed that many of the longest words to date are scientific words. Why is that so? It’s because the scientific naming convention orbinomial nomenclature followed by the scientific community is derived from Latin. Latin words tend to have more vowels and, therefore, more letters. This naming convention is standardized. Meaning, every creature or organism will only have one scientific name, regardless of where they are in the world. Here are some examples:

1.Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides (42 letters) — a species of soldier fly native to Thailand.

2. Griseotyrannus aurantioatrocristatus (36 letters) — a species of bird. It is native to South-Central and South-Eastern Amazonia. It is known as the crown slaty flycatcher. 

3. Anaerobiospirillum succiniciproducens (37 letters) — a genus of spiral-shaped bacteria.

4. Gammaracanthuskytodermogammarus loricatobaicalensis (51 letters) — the longest proposed name for an organism — a tiny amphipod from Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake, in Russia.

In Short…

Ridiculously long words can make for interesting trivia, but, let’s face it, few will benefit from adding these monstrosities to their vocabulary. But if you’re looking for a lengthy word that could net you a world record, try oxyphenbutazone. It’s believed to be the highest-scoring word that can be played in a game of Scrabble (1,458 points on an outside edge).

Quick Longest Words in English Grammar Quiz

Read More: Hyphen vs. Dash: Size Matters in Punctuation

Do you want to impress your friends with the longest English words? This blog is for you! Some of these words aren’t used very often, but some of them are quite common and you will absolutely be able to use them whenever you’re speaking English. 

• The longest word in English
• The longest word in the dictionary
• The longest words we actually use
• The longest word with one syllable
• The longest word with one vowel

The longest word in English

The actual longest word in English is unfortunately so long that I can’t write it here. It has 189,819 letters and takes over three hours to say! We don’t have time for that. And thankfully, it isn’t a word you’re likely to use because it’s the chemical name for titin. Here’s a very brief snapshot: meth…ucine. Just add 189,810 letters in between. 

The longest word in the dictionary

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word in any major English dictionary. It refers to a lung disease which can also be called silicosis. Why the long version then? Because it was deliberately made up to be the longest word in the English dictionary. The longest non-technical, non-medical word in an English dictionary is the 29-letter flocci­nauci­nihili­pili­fication. This is a Latin word that means the act of estimating that something is worthless. 

The longest words we actually use

You might have realized you’ve never heard anyone use any of the words we’ve mentioned so far. That has nothing to do with your level of English – most native speakers don’t know those words either! The longest words you will see in a normal English text are counterrevolutionaries and deinstitutionalisation, both with 22 letters. Another, with 21 letters, is incomprehensibilities, meaning things which are impossible to understand. The longest word we use regularly in everyday speech is probably uncharacteristically, at 20 letters. 

The longest word with one syllable

Brits and Americans are going to argue over this one. Because of our different pronunciations, we don’t agree on what is the longest one-syllable word in English. People from the US and Canada might tell you that it’s the word squirrel(l)ed. This has ten or eleven letters, again depending on where you’re from. While our transatlantic friends pronounce this something like ‘squirld’ (ˈskwərld), Brits pronounce the word squirrelled with two syllables: ‘squir-relled’ (ˈskwir-əld). I don’t want to say who’s wrong or right but… we are learning British English here. 

There are several longest words with one syllable in British English and they all have nine letters: screeched, scratched and strengths are just three of them. (We’re going to see strengths again in a bit – it’s our word of the day today.)

The longest word with only vowels

Euouae wins this category. With six letters, it is the longest word in English with only vowels. However, ask an English person what this word means and they probably won’t have a clue. It’s a musical word from medieval times, so not a massively useful term to know for most of us.

The longest word without a vowel

People argue over this one because it’s hard to agree on what is or isn’t a vowel. If we take the standard English definition that there are five vowels – a e i o u – then rhythms is the longest English word without a vowel. But some people will say that the y in rhythm acts as a vowel.

Another worthy contender for this category is the word tsktsks. That doesn’t look much like English, does it? It’s more of a sound than a word and it’s sometimes spelt tsk-tsks, but tsktsks is allowed in Scrabble so I think it counts. It’s similar to a tut-tut sound of disapproval. 

The longest word with one vowel

Strengths! Our word of the day is back. Strengths, with nine letters, is the longest word in English with only one vowel. A fairly close rival is schnapps, which has eight letters; so let’s raise a glass to it, and to all of the long words we’ve met today, and say ‘cheers’.  

Which of these long words do you think you’ll be able to use in your next English conversation?

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Laura is a freelance writer and was an ESL teacher for eight years. She was born in the UK and has lived in Australia and Poland, where she writes blogs for Lingoda about everything from grammar to dating English speakers. She’s definitely better at the first one. She loves travelling and that’s the other major topic that she writes on. Laura likes pilates and cycling, but when she’s feeling lazy she can be found curled up watching Netflix. She’s currently learning Polish, and her battle with that mystifying language has given her huge empathy for anyone struggling to learn English. Find out more about her work in her portfolio.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The identity of the longest word in English depends on the definition of a word and of length.

Words may be derived naturally from the language’s roots or formed by coinage and construction. Additionally, comparisons are complicated because place names may be considered words, technical terms may be arbitrarily long, and the addition of suffixes and prefixes may extend the length of words to create grammatically correct but unused or novel words.

The length of a word may also be understood in multiple ways. Most commonly, length is based on orthography (conventional spelling rules) and counting the number of written letters. Alternate, but less common, approaches include phonology (the spoken language) and the number of phonemes (sounds).

Word	Letters	Meaning	Claim	Dispute
methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl…isoleucine	189,819	The chemical composition of titin, the largest known protein	Longest known word overall by magnitudes. Attempts to say the entire word have taken two[1] to three and a half hours.[2]	Technical; not in dictionary; whether this should actually be considered a word is disputed
methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamyl…serine	1,909	The chemical name of E. coli TrpA (P0A877)	Longest published word[3]	Technical
lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsano…pterygon	183	A fictional dish of food	Longest word coined by a major author,[4] the longest word ever to appear in literature[5]	Contrived nonce word; not in dictionary; Ancient Greek transliteration
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis	45	The disease silicosis	Longest word in a major dictionary[6]	Contrived coinage to make it the longest word; technical, but only mentioned and never actually used in communication
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious	34	Unclear in source work, has been cited as a nonsense word	Made popular in the Mary Poppins film and musical[7]	Contrived coinage
pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism	30	A hereditary medical disorder	Longest non-contrived word in a major dictionary[8]	Technical
antidisestablishmentarianism	28	The political position of opposing disestablishment	Longest non-contrived and nontechnical word[9]	Not all dictionaries accept it due to lack of usage.[10]
honorificabilitudinitatibus	27	The state of being able to achieve honors	Longest word in Shakespeare’s works; longest word in the English language featuring alternating consonants and vowels[11]	Latin

Major dictionaries

The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters), a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles,^[12] specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis. The word was deliberately coined to be the longest word in English, and has since been used^{[citation needed]} in a close approximation of its originally intended meaning, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim.^[6]

The Oxford English Dictionary contains pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters).

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary does not contain antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters), as the editors found no widespread, sustained usage of the word in its original meaning. The longest word in that dictionary is electroencephalographically (27 letters).^[13]

The longest non-technical word in major dictionaries 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.^[14][15][16]

Ross Eckler has noted that most of the longest English words are not likely to occur in general text, meaning non-technical present-day text seen by casual readers, in which the author did not specifically intend to use an unusually long word. According to Eckler, the longest words likely to be encountered in general text are deinstitutionalization and counterrevolutionaries, with 22 letters each.^[17]

A computer study of over a million samples of normal English prose found that the longest word one is likely to encounter on an everyday basis is uncharacteristically, at 20 letters.^[18]

The word internationalization is abbreviated «i18n», the embedded number representing the number of letters between the first and the last.^[19][20][21]

Creations of long words

Coinages

In his play Assemblywomen (Ecclesiazousae), the ancient Greek comedic playwright Aristophanes created a word of 171 letters (183 in the transliteration below), which describes a dish by stringing together its ingredients:

Henry Carey’s farce Chrononhotonthologos (1743) holds the opening line: «Aldiborontiphoscophornio! Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?»

Thomas Love Peacock put these creations into the mouth of the phrenologist Mr. Cranium in his 1816 book Headlong Hall: osteosarchaematosplanchnochondroneuromuelous (44 characters) and osseocarnisanguineoviscericartilaginonervomedullary (51 characters).

James Joyce made up nine 100-letter words plus one 101-letter word 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 reference to 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 the protagonist was reading Finnegans Wake.

«Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious», the 34-letter title of a song from the movie Mary Poppins, does appear in several dictionaries, but only as a proper noun defined in reference to the song title. The attributed meaning is «a word that you say when you don’t know what to say.» The idea and invention of the word is credited to songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman.

Agglutinative constructions

The English language 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. More familiarly, the addition of numerous «great»s to a relative, such as «great-great-great-great-grandparent», can produce words of arbitrary length. In musical notation, an 8192nd note may be called a semihemidemisemihemidemisemihemidemisemiquaver.

Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest common example of a word formed by agglutinative construction.

Technical terms

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

The IUPAC nomenclature for organic chemical compounds is open-ended, giving rise to the 189,819-letter chemical name Methionylthreonylthreonyl…isoleucine for the protein also known as titin, which is involved in striated muscle formation. In nature, DNA molecules can be much bigger than protein molecules and therefore potentially be referred to with much longer chemical names. For example, the wheat chromosome 3B contains almost 1 billion base pairs,^[22] so the sequence of one of its strands, if written out in full like Adenilyladenilylguanilylcystidylthymidyl…, would be about 8 billion letters long. The longest published word, Acetylseryltyrosylseryliso…serine, referring to the coat protein of a certain strain of tobacco mosaic virus (P03575), is 1,185 letters long, and appeared in the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Abstracts Service in 1964 and 1966.^[23] In 1965, the Chemical Abstracts Service overhauled its naming system and started discouraging excessively long names. In 2011, a dictionary broke this record with a 1909-letter word describing the trpA protein (P0A877).^[3]

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. Under the long number scale, it would be 10^6(6560) = 10³⁹³⁶⁰.

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 in 1929 after being petitioned by Mary J. Rathbun to take up the case.^[24]

Myxococcus llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogochensis is the longest accepted binomial name for an organism. It is a bacterium found in soil collected at Llan­fair­pwll­gwyn­gyll­ (discussed below). Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides is the longest accepted binomial name for any animal, or any organism visible with the naked eye. It is a species of soldier fly.^[25] The genus name Parapropalaehoplophorus (a fossil glyptodont, an extinct family of mammals related to armadillos) is two letters longer, but does not contain a similarly long species name.

Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic, at 52 letters, describing the spa waters at Bath, England, is attributed to Dr. Edward Strother (1675–1737).^[26] The word is composed of the following elements:

• Aequeo: equal (Latin, aequo^[27])
• Salino: containing salt (Latin, salinus)
• Calcalino: calcium (Latin, calx)
• Ceraceo: waxy (Latin, cera)
• Aluminoso: alumina (Latin)
• Cupreo: from «copper»
• Vitriolic: resembling vitriol

Notable long words

Place names

The longest officially recognized place name in an English-speaking country is Taumata­whakatangihanga­koauau­o­tamatea­turi­pukaka­piki­maunga­horo­nuku­pokai­whenua­ki­tana­tahu (85 letters), which is a hill in New Zealand. The name is in the Māori language. A widely recognized version of the name is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu (85 letters), which appears on the signpost at the location (see the photo on this page). In Māori, the digraphs ng and wh are each treated as single letters.

In Canada, the longest place name is Dysart, Dudley, Harcourt, Guilford, Harburn, Bruton, Havelock, Eyre and Clyde, a township in Ontario, at 61 letters or 68 non-space characters.^[28]

The 58-letter name Llan­fair­pwll­gwyn­gyll­gogery­chwyrn­drob­wlll­lanty­silio­gogo­goch is the name of a town on Anglesey, an island of Wales. In terms of the traditional Welsh alphabet, the name is only 51 letters long, as certain digraphs in Welsh are considered as single letters, 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 Llanfair PG.

The longest non-contrived place name in the United Kingdom which is a single non-hyphenated word is Cottonshopeburnfoot (19 letters) and the longest which is hyphenated is Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe (29 characters).

The longest place name in the United States (45 letters) is Char­gogga­gogg­man­chau­ggagogg­chau­buna­gunga­maugg, a lake in Webster, Massachusetts. It means «Fishing Place at the Boundaries – Neutral Meeting Grounds» and is sometimes facetiously translated as «you fish your side of the water, I fish my side of the water, nobody fishes the middle». The lake is also known as Webster Lake.^[29] 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 longest single-word town names in the U.S. are Kleinfeltersville, Pennsylvania and Mooselookmeguntic, Maine.

The longest official geographical name in Australia is Ma­mungku­kumpu­rang­kunt­junya.^[30] It has 26 letters and is a Pitjantjatjara word meaning «where the Devil urinates».^[31]

Liechtenstein is the longest country name with single name in English. The second longest country name with single name in English is Turkmenistan. There are longer country names if one includes ones with spaces.

Personal names

Guinness World Records formerly contained a category for longest personal name used.

• From about 1975 to 1985, the recordholder was Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfe­schlegelstein­hausenberger­dorffvoraltern­waren­gewissenhaft­schaferswessen­schafewaren­wohlgepflege­und­sorgfaltigkeit­beschutzen­von­angreifen­durch­ihrraubgierigfeinde­welche­voraltern­zwolftausend­jahres­vorandieerscheinen­wander­ersteer­dem­enschderraumschiff­gebrauchlicht­als­sein­ursprung­von­kraftgestart­sein­lange­fahrt­hinzwischen­sternartigraum­auf­der­suchenach­diestern­welche­gehabt­bewohnbar­planeten­kreise­drehen­sich­und­wohin­der­neurasse­von­verstandigmen­schlichkeit­konnte­fortplanzen­und­sicher­freuen­anlebens­langlich­freude­und­ruhe­mit­nicht­ein­furcht­vor­angreifen­von­anderer­intelligent­geschopfs­von­hinzwischen­sternartigraum, Senior (746 letters), also known as Wolfe+585, Senior.
• After 1985 Guinness briefly awarded the record to a newborn girl with a longer name. The category was removed shortly afterward.

Long birth names are often coined in protest of naming laws or for other personal reasons.

• The naming law in Sweden was challenged by parents Lasse Diding and Elisabeth Hallin, who proposed the given name «Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116» for their child (pronounced [ˈǎlːbɪn], 43 characters), which was rejected by a district court in Halmstad, southern Sweden.

Words with certain characteristics of notable length

• Schmaltzed and strengthed (10 letters) appear to be the longest monosyllabic words recorded in The Oxford English Dictionary, while scraunched and scroonched appear to be the longest monosyllabic words recorded in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary; but squirrelled (11 letters) is the longest if pronounced as one syllable only (as permitted in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary at squirrel, and in Longman Pronunciation Dictionary). Schtroumpfed (12 letters) was coined by Umberto Eco, while broughammed (11 letters) was coined by William Harmon after broughamed (10 letters) was coined by George Bernard Shaw.
• Strengths is the longest word in the English language containing only one vowel letter.^[32]
• Euouae, a medieval musical term, is the longest English word consisting only of vowels, and the word with the most consecutive vowels. However, the «word» itself is simply a mnemonic consisting of the vowels to be sung in the phrase «seculorum Amen» at the end of the lesser doxology. (Although u was often used interchangeably with v, and the variant «Evovae» is occasionally used, the v in these cases would still be a vowel.)
• The longest words with no repeated letters are dermatoglyphics and uncopyrightable.^[33]
• The longest word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops, a grass genus. However, this is arguably a proper noun. There are several six-letter English words with their letters in alphabetical order, including abhors, almost, begins, biopsy, chimps and chintz.^[34] There are few 7-letter words, such as «billowy» and «beefily». The longest words whose letters are in reverse alphabetical order are sponged, wronged and trollied.
• The longest words recorded in OED with each vowel only once, and in order, are abstemiously, affectiously, and tragediously (OED). Fracedinously and gravedinously (constructed from adjectives in OED) have thirteen letters; Gadspreciously, constructed from Gadsprecious (in OED), has fourteen letters. Facetiously is among the few other words directly attested in OED with single occurrences of all six vowels (counting y as a vowel).
• The longest single palindromic word in English is rotavator, another name for a rotary tiller for breaking and aerating soil.

Typed words

• The longest words typable with only the left hand using conventional hand placement on a QWERTY keyboard are tesseradecades, aftercataracts, dereverberated, dereverberates^[35] and the more common but sometimes hyphenated sweaterdresses.^[34] Using the right hand alone, the longest word that can be typed is johnny-jump-up, or, excluding hyphens, monimolimnion^[36] and phyllophyllin.
• The longest English word typable using only the top row of letters has 11 letters: rupturewort. The word teetertotter (used in North American English) is longer at 12 letters, although it is usually spelled with a hyphen.
• The longest using only the middle row is shakalshas (10 letters). Nine-letter words include flagfalls; eight-letter words include galahads and alfalfas.
• Since the bottom row contains no vowels, no standard words can be formed. ^[37]
• The longest words typable by alternating left and right hands are antiskepticism and leucocytozoans respectively.^[34]
• On a Dvorak keyboard, the longest «left-handed» words are epopoeia, jipijapa, peekapoo, and quiaquia.^[38] Other such long words are papaya, Kikuyu, opaque, and upkeep.^[39] Kikuyu is typed entirely with the index finger, and so the longest one-fingered word on the Dvorak keyboard. There are no vowels on the right-hand side, and so the longest «right-handed» word is crwths.

See also

References

External links

• A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia – Long words
  • Long words (chemical names)
  • Long words (place names)
• What is the longest English word?, AskOxford.com «Ask the Experts»
• What is the Longest Word?, Fun-With-Words.com
• Full chemical name of titin.
• Taxonomy of Wordplay