Longest word in English
Encyclopedia
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.
dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
, a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica
particles, 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.
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.
(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.
's advertising agency Boase Massimi Pollitt
used a 100-letter but several-word term "Lipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingoodbuzzincooltalkinhighwalkinfastlivinevergivincoolfizzin" in TV and film advertising
.
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.
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
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). The word is composed of the following elements:
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 103(6560+1) = 1019683. Under the long number scale
, it would be 106(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. 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.
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.
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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. 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
. It has 26 letters and is a Pitjantjatjara word meaning "where the Devil urinates".
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.
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.
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.
between the two ss. A retort asserts that beleaguered is longer still, since it contains a league
. The riddle and both jocular answers date from the 19th century.
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.'"
Definition
A definition is a passage that explains the meaning of a term , or a type of thing. The term to be defined is the definiendum. A term may have many different senses or meanings...
of what constitutes a word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
in the English language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, 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
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
and number of written letters
Letter (alphabet)
A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....
, or (less commonly) phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
and the number of phonemes.
| Word | Letters | Characteristics | Dispute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine Titin Titin , also known as connectin, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the TTN gene. Titin is a giant protein that functions as a molecular spring which is responsible for the passive elasticity of muscle. It is composed of 244 individually folded protein domains connected by unstructured... |
189,819 | Chemical name of titin Titin Titin , also known as connectin, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the TTN gene. Titin is a giant protein that functions as a molecular spring which is responsible for the passive elasticity of muscle. It is composed of 244 individually folded protein domains connected by unstructured... , the largest known protein |
Technical; not in dictionary; disputed whether it is a word |
| A Tryptophan synthetase A Protein>Methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamyl...serine | 1,909 | Longest published word | Technical |
| Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsano...pterygon | 183 | Longest word coined by a major author, the longest word ever to appear in literature. | Coined; not in dictionary; Ancient Greek Ancient Greek Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek... transliteration |
| Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "a factitious word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs. A condition meeting the word's definition is normally called... |
45 | Longest word in a major dictionary | Technical; coined to be the longest word |
| Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is an English word, with 34 letters, that was in the song with the same title in the 1964 Disney musical film Mary Poppins. The song was written by the Sherman Brothers, and sung by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke... |
34 | Famous for being created for the Mary Poppins film Mary Poppins (film) Mary Poppins is a 1964 musical film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, produced by Walt Disney, and based on the Mary Poppins books series by P. L. Travers with illustrations by Mary Shepard. The film was directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, with songs by... and musical Mary Poppins (musical) Mary Poppins is a Walt Disney Theatrical musical based on the similarly titled series of children's books by P. L. Travers and the Disney 1964 film. The West End production opened in December 2004 and received two Olivier Awards, one for Best Actress in a Musical and the other for Best Theatre... |
Coined |
| Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is an inherited disorder, named for its similarity to pseudohypoparathyroidism in presentation... |
30 | Longest non-coined word in a major dictionary | Technical |
| Floccinaucinihilipilification | 29 | Longest unchallenged nontechnical word | Coined |
| Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism is a political position that originated in 19th-century Britain in opposition to proposals for the disestablishment of the Church of England, that is, to remove the Anglican Church's status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales.The establishment was... |
28 | Longest non-coined and nontechnical word | |
| Honorificabilitudinitatibus Honorificabilitudinitatibus Honorificabilitudinitatibus is the dative and ablative plural of the mediæval Latin word honorificabilitudinitas, which can be translated as "the state of being able to achieve honours". It is mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost... |
27 | Longest word in Shakespeare's works; longest word in the English language featuring alternating consonants and vowels. | Latin |
Major dictionaries
The longest word in any of the major English languageEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "a factitious word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs. A condition meeting the word's definition is normally called...
, a word that refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica
Silicon dioxide
The chemical compound silicon dioxide, also known as silica , is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula '. It has been known for its hardness since antiquity...
particles, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis
Silicosis
Silicosis, also known as Potter's rot, is a form of occupational lung disease caused by inhalation of crystalline silica dust, and is marked by inflammation and scarring in forms of nodular lesions in the upper lobes of the lungs...
. 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.
The Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
contains pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism
Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism
Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is an inherited disorder, named for its similarity to pseudohypoparathyroidism in presentation...
(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.
Coinages
In his play AssemblywomenAssemblywomen
Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae is a play dating from 391 BCE which is similar in theme to Lysistrata in that a large portion of the comedy comes from women involving themselves in politics...
(Ecclesiazousae), the ancient Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
comedic playwright Aristophanes
Aristophanes
Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
created a word of 171 letters (183 in the transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
below), which describes a dish
Recipe
A recipe is a set of instructions that describe how to prepare or make something, especially a culinary dish.-Components:Modern culinary recipes normally consist of several components*The name of the dish...
by stringing together its ingredients:
Henry Carey
Henry Carey (writer)
Henry Carey was an English poet, dramatist and song-writer. He is remembered as an anti-Walpolean satirist and also as a patriot. Several of his melodies continue to be sung today, and he was widely praised in the generation after his death...
's farce Chrononhotonthologos
Chrononhotonthologos
Chrononhotonthologos is a satirical play by the English poet and songwriter Henry Carey from 1734. Although the play has been seen as nonsense verse, it was also seen and celebrated at the time as a satire on Robert Walpole and Queen Caroline, wife of George II.The play is relatively short on the...
(1743) holds the opening line: "Aldiborontiphoscophornio! Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?"
James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
made up nine 101-letter words in his novel Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
, 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
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
. As it appears nowhere else except in reference to this passage, it is generally not accepted as a real word. Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
made mention of it in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed...
, when the protagonist was reading Finnegans Wake.
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is an English word, with 34 letters, that was in the song with the same title in the 1964 Disney musical film Mary Poppins. The song was written by the Sherman Brothers, and sung by Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke...
", the 34-letter title of a song from the movie Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (film)
Mary Poppins is a 1964 musical film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, produced by Walt Disney, and based on the Mary Poppins books series by P. L. Travers with illustrations by Mary Shepard. The film was directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, with songs by...
, does appear in several dictionaries, but only as a proper noun
Proper noun
A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
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, PepsiPepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
's advertising agency Boase Massimi Pollitt
Boase Massimi Pollitt
Boase Massimi Pollitt is an advertising agency founded in October 1968 by Martin Boase, Gabe Massimi, and Stanley Pollitt.The three founders had previously worked at Pritchard Wood, but went their own way after failing to buy the company from its parent...
used a 100-letter but several-word term "Lipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingoodbuzzincooltalkinhighwalkinfastlivinevergivincoolfizzin" in TV and film advertising
Advertising slogan
Advertising slogans are short, often memorable phrases used in advertising campaigns. They are claimed to be the most effective means of drawing attention to one or more aspects of a product. A strapline is a British term used as a secondary sentence attached to a brand name...
.
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
Big Mac
The Big Mac is a hamburger sold by McDonald's, an international fast food restaurant chain. It is one of the company's signature products...
sandwich.
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 agglutinativeAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
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
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Antidisestablishmentarianism is a political position that originated in 19th-century Britain in opposition to proposals for the disestablishment of the Church of England, that is, to remove the Anglican Church's status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales.The establishment was...
" 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
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
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
Antidisestablishmentarianism
Antidisestablishmentarianism is a political position that originated in 19th-century Britain in opposition to proposals for the disestablishment of the Church of England, that is, to remove the Anglican Church's status as the state church of England, Ireland, and Wales.The establishment was...
(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
Binomial nomenclature
Binomial nomenclature is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages...
—it is a kind of amphipod. However, this name, proposed by B. Dybowski, was invalidated by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature
The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is a widely accepted convention in zoology that rules the formal scientific naming of organisms treated as animals...
.
Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic, at 52 letters, describing the spa
Hot spring
A hot spring is a spring that is produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust. There are geothermal hot springs in many locations all over the crust of the earth.-Definitions:...
waters at Bath, England, is attributed to Dr. Edward Strother (1675–1737). The word is composed of the following elements:
- Aequeo: equal (Latin, aequo)
- 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
John Horton Conway
John Horton Conway is a prolific mathematician active in the theory of finite groups, knot theory, number theory, combinatorial game theory and coding theory...
and Landon Curt Noll
Landon Curt Noll
Landon Curt Noll is an American computer scientist, co-discoverer of the 25th Mersenne prime and discoverer of the 26th, which he found while still enrolled in high school and concurrently at Cal State Hayward....
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 103(6560+1) = 1019683. Under the long number scale
Long and short scales
The long and short scales are two of several different large-number naming systems used throughout the world for integer powers of ten. Many countries, including most in continental Europe, use the long scale whereas most English-speaking countries use the short scale...
, it would be 106(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
Titin
Titin , also known as connectin, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the TTN gene. Titin is a giant protein that functions as a molecular spring which is responsible for the passive elasticity of muscle. It is composed of 244 individually folded protein domains connected by unstructured...
which is involved in striated muscle formation. Its empirical formula
Empirical formula
In chemistry, the empirical formula of a chemical compound is the simplest positive integer ratio of atoms of each element present in a compound. An empirical formula makes no reference to isomerism, structure, or absolute number of atoms. The empirical formula is used as standard for most ionic...
is C132983H211861N36149O40883S693. A 1,185-letter example, Acetylseryltyrosylseryliso...serine, refers to the coat protein of a certain strain of tobacco mosaic virus
Tobacco mosaic virus
Tobacco mosaic virus is a positive-sense single stranded RNA virus that infects plants, especially tobacco and other members of the family Solanaceae. The infection causes characteristic patterns on the leaves . TMV was the first virus to be discovered...
and was published by the American Chemical Society
American Chemical Society
The American Chemical Society is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 161,000 members at all degree-levels and in all fields of chemistry, chemical...
's Chemical Abstracts Service
Chemical Abstracts Service
Chemical Abstracts is a periodical index that provides summaries and indexes of disclosures in recently published scientific documents. Approximately 8,000 journals, technical reports, dissertations, conference proceedings, and new books, in any of 50 languages, are monitored yearly, as are patent...
in 1964 and 1966. 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
Internationalization and localization
In computing, internationalization and localization are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market...
are abbreviated "i18n" and "l10n", respectively, the embedded number representing the number of letters between the first and the last.
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
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is the Māori name for a hill, high, close to Porangahau, south of Waipukurau in southern Hawke's Bay, New Zealand.The name is often shortened to Taumata...
(85 letters), which is a hill in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
. The name is in the Māori language
Maori language
Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...
.
In Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the longest place name is Dysart, Dudley, Harcourt, Guilford, Harburn, Bruton, Havelock, Eyre and Clyde
Dysart et al, Ontario
The United Townships of Dysart, Dudley, Harcourt, Guilford, Harburn, Bruton, Havelock, Eyre and Clyde is a municipality in Haliburton County in Central Ontario, Canada...
, a township
Township
The word township is used to refer to different kinds of settlements in different countries. Township is generally associated with an urban area. However there are many exceptions to this rule. In Australia, the United States, and Canada, they may be settlements too small to be considered urban...
in Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, at 61 letters or 68 non-space characters.
Anglesey
Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales...
, an island of Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. This place's name is actually 51 letters long, as certain character groups in Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
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
Webster, Massachusetts
-Media:* Worcester Telegram & Gazette * Webster Times, published every Friday* The Patriot, published every Wednesday* WGFP-AM 940, a country music station* Boston Globe* Boston Herald-Library:...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. 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. The longest hyphenated names in the U.S. are Winchester-on-the-Severn, a town in Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, and Washington-on-the-Brazos, a notable place in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
history.
The longest official geographical name in Australia is Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill
Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill
Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya Hill is a hill in South Australia. The name means "where the devil urinates" in the regional Pitjantjatjara language. It is the longest official place name in Australia....
. It has 26 letters and is a Pitjantjatjara word meaning "where the Devil urinates".
In Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, the longest English placename at 22 letters is Muckanaghederdauhaulia
Muckanaghederdauhaulia
This is a list of the longest place names in Ireland. It includes names written in English as a single word of at least 20 letters. The vast majority of English-language place names in Ireland are anglicisations of Irish language names. The spelling which has legal force is usually that used by the...
(from the Irish language
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
, Muiceanach Idir Dhá Sháile, meaning "pig-marsh between two saltwater inlets") in County Galway
County Galway
County Galway is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the city of Galway. Galway County Council is the local authority for the county. There are several strongly Irish-speaking areas in the west of the county...
. If this is disallowed for being derived from Irish, or not a town, the longest at 19 letters is Newtownmountkennedy
Newtownmountkennedy
Newtownmountkennedy is a village in County Wicklow, Ireland. It developed within the historic townland of Ballygarny . It is just off the N11 road to Wexford, just south of Kilpedder and south-west of Greystones. It is about north of Wicklow Town approximately from Dublin.The R772 regional road...
in County Wicklow
County Wicklow
County Wicklow is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wicklow, which derives from the Old Norse name Víkingalág or Wykynlo. Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county...
.
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
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
; it has the Guinness World record
Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...
for longest place name in the world, not in English however.
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.
- EuouaeEuouaeEuouae is a mnemonic which was used in medieval music to denote the sequence of tones in the "seculorum Amen" passage of the lesser doxology, Gloria Patri, which ends with the phrase In saecula saeculorum, Amen...
, 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 mnemonicMnemonicA mnemonic , or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids memory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often verbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something,...
consisting of the vowels to be sung in the phrase "seculorum Amen" at the end of the lesser doxologyDoxologyA doxology is a short hymn of praises to God in various Christian worship services, often added to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns...
. (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 wordsLongest wordsThe longest word in any given language depends on the word formation rules of each specific language, and on the types of words allowed for consideration. Agglutinative languages allow for the creation of long words via compounding. Even non-agglutinative languages may allow word formation of...
with no repeated lettersIsogramAn isogram is a logological term for a word or phrase without a repeating letter. It is also used by some to mean a word or phrase in which each letter appears the same number of times, not necessarily just once....
are dermatoglyphicsDermatoglyphicsDermatoglyphics is the scientific study of fingerprints. The term was coined by Dr. Harold Cummins, the father of American fingerprint analysis, even though the process of fingerprint identification had already been in use for several hundred years. All primates have ridged skin...
, misconjugatedly and uncopyrightables. - The longest word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter AegilopsAegilopsAegilops is a genus of plants generally known as goatgrasses and belonging to the grass family, Poaceae. There are about 23 species and numerous sub species in the genus. Various members of the genus are classed as agricultural weeds. Growing through the winter, they resemble winter wheat...
, a grass genus. However, this is arguably both Latin and a proper nounProper nounA proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
. There are several six-letter English words with their letters in alphabetical order, including almost, biopsy, and chintz. - 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 semivowelSemivowelIn phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
y. - The longest single palindromicPalindromeA palindrome is a word, phrase, number, or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction, with general allowances for adjustments to punctuation and word dividers....
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 QWERTYQWERTYQWERTY is the most common modern-day keyboard layout. The name comes from the first six letters appearing in the topleft letter row of the keyboard, read left to right: Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the...
keyboard are tesseradecades, aftercataracts, and the more common but sometimes hyphenated sweaterdresses. Using the right hand alone, the longest word that can be typed is johnny-jump-upHeartseaseViola tricolor, known as Heartsease, is a common European wild flower, growing as an annual or short-lived perennial. It has been introduced into North America, where it has spread widely, and is known as the Johnny Jump Up...
, or, excluding hyphenHyphenThe hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
s, monimolimnion. 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 teetertotterSeesawA seesaw is a long, narrow board pivoted in the middle so that, as one end goes up, the other goes down.-Mechanics:Mechanically a seesaw is a lever and fulcrum....
(used in North American EnglishNorth American EnglishNorth American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...
) 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.
- On a DvorakDvorak Simplified KeyboardThe Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is a keyboard layout patented in 1936 by Dr. August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, Dr. William Dealey. Over the years several slight variations were designed by the team led by Dvorak or by ANSI...
keyboard, the longest "left-handed" words are epopoeia, jipijapaJipijapaJipijapa may refer to:*Cyclanthaceae, a palm tree*Panama hat, a hat made from the leaves of that treeJipijapa as a place name:*Jipijapa, Ecuador, a town in Ecuador...
, peekapoo, and quiaquia. Other such long words are papayaPapayaThe papaya , papaw, or pawpaw is the fruit of the plant Carica papaya, the sole species in the genus Carica of the plant family Caricaceae...
, Kikuyu, opaque, and upkeep. 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 crwthCrwthThe crwth is an archaic stringed musical instrument, associated particularly with Welsh music, once widely-played in Europe.-Origin of the name:...
.
Common words in general text
Ross EcklerA. Ross Eckler, Jr.
Albert Ross Eckler, Jr. is a logologist and statistician, the son of statistician A. Ross Eckler. He received a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Princeton University....
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.
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.
Humour
Smiles, according to an old riddle, may be considered the longest word in English, as there is a mileMile
A mile is a unit of length, most commonly 5,280 feet . The mile of 5,280 feet is sometimes called the statute mile or land mile to distinguish it from the nautical mile...
between the two ss. A retort asserts that beleaguered is longer still, since it contains a league
League (unit)
A league is a unit of length . It was long common in Europe and Latin America, but it is no longer an official unit in any nation. The league originally referred to the distance a person or a horse could walk in an hour...
. The riddle and both jocular answers date from the 19th century.
In the old time radio retrospective, Golden Radio, comedian Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
jokes that "the longest word in the English language is the one that follows, 'Now, here's a word from our sponsor.'"
See also
- DonaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaftDonaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaftThe compound word |compounding]] of nouns that is possible in many Germanic languages. According to the 1996 Guinness Book of World Records, it is the longest word published in the German language, having 79 letters....
, longest published word in German - LipogramLipogramA lipogram is a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided — usually a common vowel, and frequently "E", the most common letter in the English language.Writing a lipogram is a trivial task...
- List of the longest English words with one syllable
- Longest English sentenceLongest English sentenceThere have been several claims for the longest sentence in the English language. Claims revolve around the longest printed sentence, as there is no absolute limit on the length of a written English sentence; a sentence describing successive reading, for example, could be infinitely long, and one...
- Longest word in SpanishLongest word in SpanishThe longest word in the Spanish language has been debated over for a long time, as is the case with the longest word in English.The adverb superextraordinarísimamente at 27 letters, is often considered to be the longest in the Spanish language. However, the status of this word has been...
- Longest word in TurkishLongest word in TurkishThe longest word in the Turkish language is muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine which includes 70 letters...
- Number of words in English
- Scriptio continuaScriptio continuaScriptio continua is a style of writing without spaces or other marks between words or sentences....
External links
- A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia – Long words
- What is the longest English word?, AskOxford.comAskOxford.comAskOxford.com is a website produced by the publishing house Oxford University Press , a department of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom...
"Ask the Experts" - What is the Longest Word?, Fun-With-Words.com
- Full chemical name of titin.
- Taxonomy of Wordplay