The longest sentence using one word

Edit: I originally meant some of the repetitive examples below e.g. Bergen bergen bergen or Buffalo buffalo buffalo, however some of the other versions are really interesting where it’s a single word or it’s the same word repeated with one or two filler words included. Really fun to see how creative and strange language is.

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level 1

How about only two letters (well, mostly):

te tetted e tettetett tettet, te tettetett tettek tettese? (did you do this fake deed, you doer of fake deeds?)

level 2

Italian here, and you just repeatedly said «boobs».

level 2

Or, a long sentence using ONE word:

Legeslegmegszentségteleníttethetetlenebbjeitekként.

level 2

Suddenly feeling a lot less positive about my attempt to learn Hungarian.

level 2

If you play it on Google Translate (which automatically recognizes it as Finnish) it sounds like it’s humming a song.

level 1

Wydrze wydrze wydrze wydrze wydrze wydrze.

Which means: Baby otter snatches baby otter from another otter.

// Polish

level 2

Could you break that down word by word? In Czech (if I accept the stretch of using «vydrat» as «snatch») what you said would just be

«vydře vydře vydře vydře»

(Baby otter — snatches — baby otter — from otter)

I can’t really understand how your two extra «wydrze» fit into this.

level 1

vaðlaheiðarvegavinnuverkfærageymsluskúraútidyralyklakippuhringur

level 2

I have 2 questions:

  1. Is that one word?

  2. What does it mean?

level 1

Not sure if it’s the longest, but the only one I know that is pretty long…
Als in Bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen, bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen.

level 2

Isn’t that «als in» part of the sentence?

level 1

Si ton tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton sera tondu.

level 2

« If your uncle shears your uncle, your uncle will be sheared »

level 2

· 4 yr. ago · edited 4 yr. ago

And «si ta tata tâte ta tata, ta tata sera tâtée.»

If your aunt touch your aunt, your aunt would be touched.

level 1

Macht Macht Macht?
no idea if there are longer ones, it’s kind of hard in German

This is an open ended puzzle of wordplay. Here’s an example of acceptable words: reed, read, read, red, etc. They are linked by either different spellings of the same pronunciation (reed and read), or different pronunciations of the same spelling (read, read). Only words in the OED are acceptable.

The puzzle is to create a long sentence using only words from such a pool. Not all words in the pool need to be used, and adjacent words do not need to be linked. Which sentence is the longest?

Answers must start with the proposed sentence in bold, followed by explanations or commentary as desired.

Degenerate approaches are not acceptable. For example, suppose some buffalo are named Buffalo, after the spicy chicken wings. Both of these words are in the OED, including the capitalization of the later, however the city name of Buffalo is not. Now suppose some of their offspring are named Buffalo Buffalo. And suppose some of their offspring are named Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo. This leads to English sentences such as «Buffalo buffalo buffalo.», where the first lowercase word is the verb, to quote the OED, «To overpower, overawe, or constrain by superior force or influence; to outwit, perplex.», and the second lowercase word is the common name of a species of quadrupeds. Similarly, another sentence is: «Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.», as is «Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.» And so on. Grammatically simple sentences of any arbitrary length can be formed. Without this exclusion, the puzzle certainly has no ultimate answer.

I’m including the tag ‘open-ended’ because I suspect the ultimate winning sentence is unknown, though potentially computable someday given an appropriate database to form the pool of words and NLP.

Catholic

March 6, 2013 by Mark Shea

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The longest sentence you can write in English using one word
March 6, 2013
Mark Shea


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    “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

    According to William Rappaport, a linguistics professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo (naturally), that — the word “Buffalo,” eight times in a row — is a legitimate, grammatically valid sentence.

    Really. His long, hard to mentally wrestle with explanation is in the above link. but to boil it down quickly:

    “Buffalo,” with a capital “B,” refers to the area of Buffalo, New York.
    “buffalo,” with a lower-case “b,” can be a noun meaning “bison” or a verb meaning “intimidate”
    Adding a few words to clarify, you get:

    “Bison from Buffalo, NY, which other bison from Buffalo, NY intimidate, also intimidate (even other) bison from Buffalo, NY.”

    Clunky? Sure. But it’s otherwise perfectly acceptable English. Try it with other animals and action: “Field mice domestic cats chase enjoy Swiss cheese.” Works fine.


    Bonus fact
    : “The horse raced past the barn fell” is also a perfectly sound sentence, for different reasons. It’s an example of a garden path sentence, a sentence where the most likely interpretation leads to an odd result — your initial take is that the word “and” needs to be before the word “fell.” But read it as “The horse (that was) raced past the barn fell” and it makes sense.

    From the Archives: And, the 27th Letter of the Alphabet: The ampersand — that is, “&” — was once part of the alphabet, which, as you’ll see, is how it got its name.

    Related: “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” by Lynne Truss. Four stars on roughly 600 reviews.

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