Definition of the longest word in english

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

Ready to take your Scrabble skills to the next level? This list of the longest words in the English language could score you major points on your next game — if you can remember how to spell them.

Some of the words that qualify for the title take hours to pronounce, like the 189,819-letter word for the  protein Titin. Additionally, many of the longest words are medical terms, so we have excluded some of them to allow for more variety. The end result is a list of fascinatingly lengthy words that will make your vocabulary downright sesquipedalian.

Longest Words: You have been using English for quite a while now for writing, reading, thinking, and even dreaming. English, as a language, has become a part and do up of your life. But have you ever wondered about the unique and weird words in the English language? How many times have you thought of the number of words in the English language or the smallest word or the longest word in the English language? It is not every day that we think of such weird aspects of the English language because we are so used to speaking the language that we don’t take interest and dig deep into the interesting facts about this beautiful, yet universal language.

As a result of that, in this particular article on longest words in the English language, we are going to talk about these unique titbits in the English language. One interesting fact to be noted here is that the English language, as per the Oxford English Dictionary, has approximately 171,500 words so far. That is quite a lot of vocabulary to consume in one single life, isn’t it? Thus, we will discuss a few longest words that are mentioned in the Oxford English dictionary with their meaning.

• 10 Longest Words in English Language with Meaning
• Where Do We Use Longest Words?
• FAQs on Longest Words in English

10 Longest Words in English Language with Meaning

Below is a list of the 10 longest words in the English language, along with their meaning and usage:

1. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis: This massive 45-letter English word is the longest one in the Oxford English dictionary so far. This term refers to a lung disease that is caused by the inhalation of extremely fine particles of silica and quartz dust. Yes, now you know the longest word in the English language has 45 letters in it.
2. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia: This 36-letter, increasingly complicated word is one of the English language’s longest. With a whopping 36 letters and a difficult pronunciation, it is the word with the longest time taken for proper pronunciation. This word refers to having an abnormal fear of long words. The irony is that the name is hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
3. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: Another competitor for the previous two words, with a whopping 34 letters. Also, this is one of the most popular long words in the English language. Its popularity grew after it was widely used in the film Mary Poppins. This word refers to saying something when you have nothing to say. There is a very catchy song written on this word, the most atrocious word in the English language, as per the song.
4. Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism: This soothing word for the ears is the fourth longest in the English language, with 30 letters. It refers to a mild disorder in the bloodstream that is mainly characterized by an increased level of calcium and phosphorus in the blood. Well, medical professionals and doctors will have a tough time pronouncing it for the rest of their lives.
5. Floccinaucinihilipilification: another funny but important word is one of the longest words in the Mariam Webster dictionary, which has 29 letters in it. This word refers to a habit or an act that is unimportant or has no value or recognition. While the meaning of the word has no value or is worthless, the word itself has a lot of value in English literature academic circles. It is mostly used in a humorous manner.
6. Antidisestablishmentarianism: This 28-letter-composed word refers to a 19th-century political turmoil experienced in the British Empire, which demanded the separation of the Church from the state administration. People in this movement wanted the Church of England to be deposed as the official state church of England, Ireland, and Wales.
7. Honorificabilitudinitatibus: One of the most difficult words to pronounce in this article is “honorificabilitudinitatibus.” It is the longest word in the language of English and consists of a mix of vowels and consonants.
8. Thyroparathyroidectomism: A 25-letter word is once again a technical and medical term. There are plenty of such words in the field of medicine that can make a doctor’s life more difficult as it is. This term refers to the removal or surgery of the thyroid and parathyroid glands. Once again, one should note that there are many such words in the field of surgery and medicine, and the reason for this is that most of these words are taken from a mix of languages such as Greek, Latin, Russian, and French.
9. Dicholodifluromethane: This is the only straightforward word in this list of the longest English words that can be understood by laymen, to an extent. This word refers to a chemical vapor known popularly as CFCs, the most common element found in AC, TVs, and vehicular pollution. One must be aware that this chemical substance was the reason for the depletion of our ozone layer a few years ago.
10. Incomprehensible: Again, a fairly popular word in the English language, which means something that is not possible to comprehend. This is also referred to as the longest word that is most commonly used by the general public

There are few other longest words in the English language other than the mentioned words in the above section of this longest word. However, these words are very niche in nature and are used by specific groups of people, such as scientists, doctors, astronauts, and engineers. There are plenty of chemical substances whose names are longer than the ones that are mentioned in this article on the longest words in the English language. While most of them are rarely used, it is interesting to know the meaning and usage of these words, both for general knowledge of the English language and just for the fun of it. A few of the technical words that we have come across that are long enough to feature in this article are:

• Radioimmunoelectrophoresis
• Counterimmunoeletrophoresis
• Dicholodiphenyltricholoethane
• Spookydisharmoniousconflicthellride
• Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia

Where Are the Longest Words in the English Language Used Most Commonly?

It is clear by now that not all the words mentioned in this article are used by the common man. Hence, in that case, who uses these words and where are they used? The answers to these questions lie below:

• Doctors
• Engineers
• Scientists
• Teachers
• Researchers
• A Journalist
• Diplomats
• Administrators

If you observe closely, you will get to know that most of these words are technical and are related to chemistry, physics, mathematics, geometry, or geography. And hence, these words are rarely used, and even if they are used, they are used only by a specific section of the population.

FAQs on the Longest Words in the English Language

The frequently asked questions on the Longest words in the English language are explained below:

1. Which is the longest word in the English language?
Answer: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest known word in the English language, as per the Oxford Dictionary of English.

2. Where are long words used?
Answer: Long words, which are mostly technical and are mainly used in scientific circles, are used in research papers, scientific journals, newspaper articles on science, and English literature textbooks.

3. Which is the most common longest word in English?
Answer: Incomprehensible is the longest word in English with the most common usage.

Conclusion

We would like to conclude that while the longest words mentioned above are not required by students, writers, or teachers to improve their vocabulary, knowing them is fun and increases mental horizons in English literature. It is also to be noted that this vocabulary will come in handy if you are having a conversation with a medical professional, an engineer, or a scientist who works in the fields to which these words are related.

It should come as no surprise that we are word lovers. In fact, we are big word lovers in that we love really big words. To express our love, we looked around for some of the biggest, most ludicrously long words in the English language. In addition to pure length, we also tried to find: 

• the longest word without vowels
• the longest one-syllable word
• and other uniquely long words.

Figuring out which word is the longest of them all isn’t as simple as just counting letters, though. Should you count scientific words? Should obscure, rarely used words be included, or should we give the honor to a word people actually use? In the interest of fairness, our list includes scientific words, obscure words, and all of the absurdly long words stuck in between.  

methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl… 

At over 180,000 letters long, the chemical name of the protein titin is often said to technically be the longest English word. If spoken out loud, this word takes over three hours to say! Its absurd length is due to the fact that proteins get their scientific names by combining the names of all of their joined amino acids together, and titin has quite a lot of them. For obvious reasons, titin’s official name has never actually appeared in a dictionary or scientific text. Because it is a scientific term, many would disqualify the Big M from actually taking the crown as English’s longest word. 

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, coming in at 45 letters long, is typically the biggest word you will find that actually appears in an English dictionary. According to many sources, it was coined around 1935 by Everett Smith, who at the time was the president of the National Puzzlers’ League. The word, which was basically engineered for its length, refers to a lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust. 

sesquipedalianism

Let’s look at a word related to the business of “longest words.” Sesquipedalianism is the tendency to use long words. Do you have sesquipedalian tendencies? (We do.)

The word is traced to the ancient Roman poet Horace, who in a treatise on the art of poetry wrote that in certain circumstances, poets must avoid sesquipedalia verba, a Latin phrase meaning “words [verba] a foot and a half long [sesquipedalia].” Horace clearly had a sense of humor.

pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism

We include pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism, another medical term, because this is one of the longest words to appear in major dictionaries that wasn’t created with length in mind. Pseudo- is a combining form meaning “false, pretended, unreal.”

You might notice the appearance of pseudo- twice. That’s because this disorder simulates the symptoms of pseudohypoparathyroidism, in which the body doesn’t respond to the parathyroid hormone. So, there are two levels of “faking it” going on here.

English isn’t the only language with lengthy elements of its lexicon. Get to know some of the world’s longest words!

antidisestablishmentarianism

Often, people will bust out antidisestablishmentarianism as the longest word they know and are actually able to say. This word has rarely been used and is only mentioned due to its ridiculous length. This word refers to opposition to withdrawing support from the Anglican Church as the state church of 19th-century England. 

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Even though the sound if it is something quite atrocious, we do really like the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. This nonsensical word with no real meaning was popularized by the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins and is often used by children as an example of a humorously long word. Songwriters Richard and Robert Sherman take credit for this exact spelling of the word, but the word itself existed even before Mary Poppins made it popular. 

floccinaucinihilipilification

Here’s one that is also very meta: floccinaucinihilipilification is a rarely used word that means “the estimation of something as valueless.” It is usually used in reference to itself! Dating back to the 1700s, the word contains four Latin roots that all mean “of little value” or “trifling”: floccī, naucī, nihilī, and pilī.

honorificabilitudinitatibus

The word honorificabilitudinitatibus, which is said to mean “capable of receiving honor,” has two major honors to its name. Firstly, it is the longest word to ever appear in the works of William Shakespeare. Billy the Bard only ever used it once, in his play Love’s Labour’s Lost (1590s). Secondly, honorificabilitudinitatibus is the longest English word wherein the consonants and vowels alternate back and forth. Check it again if you didn’t notice! 

uncharacteristically

Uncharacteristically for most of the really long words you’ve seen so far, the word uncharacteristically is often said to be the longest word that the average English speaker will commonly see or actually use in everyday life. As you may already know, uncharacteristically is an adverb that describes something as not being typical or acting in a characteristic manner. 

incomprehensibilities

At 21 characters, another one of the longest words you might actually use yourself is incomprehensibilities. We define incomprehensible as “impossible to comprehend or understand,” so incomprehensibilities are “things you can’t comprehend.” ¿Comprendes?

uncopyrightables 

If you look closely at the spelling, you’ll notice a peculiar thing about this word with 16 letters. It does not repeat any letter; each character is used only once. This word is sometimes called an isogram among lovers of words and word games.

One of the longest isograms is subdermatoglyphic, at 17 characters. But, since subdermatoglyphic (dermatoglyphics studies the patterns of skin markings on the hands and feet) is a bit scientific and certainly not one that is used often, we’re spotlighting uncopyrightables instead because it’s one we can all remember. It means, of course, “items that are unable to be copyrighted.”

rhythms 

The word rhythms may not look like much at only seven letters long, but it is said to be the longest English word without one of the five main vowels in it. The letter Y, that wishy-washy “sometimes vowel,” is filling in while A, E, I, O, and U are taking a break. As we all know, the word rhythms means “movements or procedures with uniform or patterned recurrence of a beat, accent, or the like.” 

Are there really words without vowels? Depending on the definition, the answer might elicit a hmm.

strengths 

Strengths is another smaller word with a big achievement under its belt. It is the longest English word with only a single vowel in it. Considering it is only eight letters long, that really shows you how much we value our vowels. The plural strengths is most often used to mean “positive or valuable attributes or qualities.”  

squirrelled 

We go nuts for this word. While the word squirreled usually only has one L in American English, some dictionaries accept this British English version as an alternate spelling. Some Americans pronounce the word squirrelled as a one-syllable word (rhyming with “curled”). This makes squirrelled the longest one-syllable word in the English language at 11 letters. If all of that sounds too squirrely for you, the one-syllable verb broughammed from the noun brougham, a type of carriage, is also 11 letters long. 

As an aside, some may tell you that the word schtroumpfed is actually the longest “English” word with only a single syllable. This word has been used in some translations of The Smurfs (which is Les Schtroumpfs in French) in place of the more commonly used nonsensical verb smurfed. In our opinion, claiming schtroumpfed is the longest one-syllable word is just a bunch of smurf. 

Aegilops

Aegilops sounds like the name of a mythical monster, but it is actually the name of a genus of wild grasses commonly known as goatgrass. In addition to that, Aegilops is also commonly said to be the longest English word that has all of the letters in alphabetical order.

Indulge your inner sesquipedalian and take the quiz!

Think you’re ready to ace our longest English words quiz? Or is it a long shot? It won’t be long before you find out. Remember that a little practice goes a long way!

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.

The identity of the longest word in English depends upon the definition of what constitutes a word in the English language, as well as how length should be compared. In addition to words derived naturally from the language’s roots (without any known intentional invention), English allows new words to be formed by coinage and construction; place names may be considered words; technical terms may be arbitrarily long. Length may be understood in terms of orthography and number of written letters, or (less commonly) phonology and the number of phonemes.

Word	Letters	Characteristics	Dispute
Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl…isoleucine	189,819	Chemical name of titin, the largest known protein	Technical; not in dictionary; disputed whether it is a word
Methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamyl…serine	1,909	Longest published word[1]	Technical
Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsano…pterygon	183	Longest word coined by a major author,[2] the longest word ever to appear in literature.[3]	Coined; not in dictionary; Ancient Greek transliteration
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis	45	Longest word in a major dictionary[4]	Technical; coined to be the longest word
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious	34	Famous for being created for the Mary Poppins film and musical	Coined
Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism	30	Longest non-coined word in a major dictionary[5]	Technical
Floccinaucinihilipilification	29	Longest unchallenged nontechnical word	Coined
Antidisestablishmentarianism	28	Longest non-coined and nontechnical word[citation needed]
Honorificabilitudinitatibus	27	Longest word in Shakespeare’s works; longest word in the English language featuring alternating consonants and vowels.[6]	Latin

Major dictionaries

The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles,^[7] 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 in a close approximation of its originally intended meaning, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim.^[4]

The Oxford English Dictionary contains pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters).

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.^{[8][9][10][11]}

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?»

James Joyce made up nine 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 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.

Advertising coinages

In 1973, Pepsi’s advertising agency Boase Massimi Pollitt used a 100-letter but several-word term «Lipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingoodbuzzincooltalkinhighwalkinfastlivinevergivincoolfizzin» in TV and film advertising.^[12]

In 1975, the 71-letter (but several-word) advertising jingle Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun (read: two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun) was first used in a McDonald’s Restaurant advertisement to describe the Big Mac sandwich.^[13]

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. 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 (the numbers succeeding the word refer to the number of letters in the word):

establish (9)

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

dis-establish (12)

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

disestablish-ment (16)

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

anti-disestablishment (20)

opposition to disestablishment

antidisestablishment-ary (23)

of or pertaining to opposition to disestablishment

antidisestablishmentari-an (25)

an opponent of disestablishment

antidisestablishmentarian-ism (28)

the movement or ideology that opposes disestablishment

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, at 52 letters, describing the spa waters at Bath, England, is attributed to Dr. Edward Strother (1675–1737).^[14] The word is composed of the following elements:

• Aequeo: equal (Latin, aequo^[15])
• Salino: containing salt (Latin, salinus)
• Calcalino: calcium (Latin, calx)
• Ceraceo: waxy (Latin, cera)
• Aluminoso: alumina (Latin)
• Cupreo: from «copper»
• Vitriolic: resembling vitriol

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.

Names of chemical compounds can be extremely long if written as one word, as 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.

The IUPAC nomenclature for organic chemical compounds is open-ended, giving rise to the 189,819-letter chemical name Methionylthreonylthreonyl…isoleucine which is involved in striated muscle formation. Its empirical formula is C₁₃₂₉₈₃H₂₁₁₈₆₁N₃₆₁₄₉O₄₀₈₈₃S₆₉₃. A 1,185-letter example, Acetylseryltyrosylseryliso…serine, refers to the coat protein of a certain strain of tobacco mosaic virus and was published by the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Abstracts Service in 1964 and 1966.^[16] It marks the longest published word before in 1965, the Chemical Abstracts Service overhauled its naming system and started discouraging excessively long names.

The words Internationalization and localization are abbreviated «i18n» and «l10n», respectively, the embedded number representing the number of letters between the first and the last.

Place names

Main article: List of long place names

There is some debate as to whether a place name is a legitimate word.

The longest officially recognized place name in an English-speaking country is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu (85 letters), which is a hill in New Zealand. The name is in the Māori language.

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.^[17]

The 58-character name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the famous name of a town on Anglesey, an island of Wales. 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 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 Lake Webster.^[18] 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 official geographical name in Australia is Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill.^[19] It has 26 letters and is a Pitjantjatjara word meaning «where the Devil urinates».^[20]

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.

Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit is the ceremonial name of Bangkok, Thailand; it has the Guinness World record for longest place name in the world, not in English however.

Scrabble

See also: English words with uncommon properties#Scrabble

Words with certain characteristics of notable length

• Strengths is the longest word in the English language containing only one vowel.
• Rhythms is the longest word in the English language containing none of the five recognised vowels.
• Schmaltzed and strengthed appear to be the longest monosyllabic words recorded in OED; but if squirrelled is pronounced as one syllable only (as permitted in SOED for squirrel), it is the longest.
• 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, misconjugatedly and uncopyrightables.^[21]
• The longest word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops, a grass genus. However, this is arguably both Latin and a proper noun. There are several six-letter English words with their letters in alphabetical order, including almost, biopsy, and chintz.^[22]
• 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 five vowels and the semivowel y.
• 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,^[23] and the more common but sometimes hyphenated sweaterdresses.^[22] Using the right hand alone, the longest word that can be typed is johnny-jump-up, or, excluding hyphens, monimolimnion.^[24] and phyllophyllin
• The longest English word typable using only the top row of letters has 11 letters: rupturewort. Similar words with 10 letters include: pepperwort, perpetuity, proprietor, typewriter, requietory, repertoire, tripertite and pourriture. The word teetertotter (used in North American English) is longer at 12 letters, although it is usually spelled with a hyphen.
• The longest words typable by alternating left and right hands are antiskepticism and leucocytozoans respectively.^[22]
• On a Dvorak keyboard, the longest «left-handed» words are epopoeia, jipijapa, peekapoo, and quiaquia.^[25] Other such long words are papaya, Kikuyu, opaque, and upkeep.^[26] 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 crwth.

Common words in general text

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.^[27]

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.^[28]

Humour

Smiles, according to an old riddle, may be considered the longest word in English, as there is a mile between the two s’s. A retort asserts that beleaguered is longer still, since it contains a league. The riddle and both jocular answers date from the 19th century.^[29][30]

In the old time radio retrospective, Golden Radio, comedian Jack Benny jokes that «the longest word in the English language is the one that follows, ‘Now, here’s a word from our sponsor.'»

See also

• Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft, longest published word in German
• Lipogram
• List of the longest English words with one syllable
• Longest English sentence
• Longest word in Spanish
• Longest word in Turkish
• Number of words in English
• Scriptio continua

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