Longest English Words

Further to my earlier post, further research has produced a number of other examples of candidates for 'the longest words - a little fun, nothing more.

antidisestablishmentarianism opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England - 28 letters

floccinaucinihilipilification the estimation of something as worthless - 29 letters

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis a supposed lung disease - 44 letters

You're unlikely to come across these words in genuine use: they're generally just provided as answers to questions about the longest words in the English language.

In terms of sheer size, however, the longest word to be found in Britain is the Welsh place name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. For obvious reasons, it's usually abbreviated to Llanfair PG.

The 20-volume historical Oxford English Dictionary includes other very long words, most of which are highly technical. These include:

otorhinolaryngological - 22 letters

immunoelectrophoretically - 25 letters

psychophysicotherapeutics - 25 letters

thyroparathyroidectomized - 25 letters

pneumoencephalographically - 26 letters

radioimmunoelectrophoresis - 26 letters

psychoneuroendocrinological - 27 letters

hepaticocholangiogastrostomy - 28 letters

spectrophotofluorometrically - 28 letters

pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism - 30 letters

People sometimes ask whether a DNA string can be considered as the longest English word, given that they can run to many thousands of letters. The answer is no: they're regarded as chemical names rather than genuine words in the sense of meaningful items of vocabulary. The same is true of the formal names of chemical compounds. These can be almost unlimited in length (for example, aminoheptafluorocyclotetraphosphonitrile, 40 letters) and many contain numerals, Roman and Greek letters, and other symbols, as well as ordinary letters. We don't tend to regard these terms as proper 'words'.

More on the subject of one syllable...

Additional to my recent comments on the longest word with only one syllable .....

I found an article suggesting those most commonly cited are screeched (nine letters), scratched, scrounged, scrunched, and stretched. Other sources suggest Oxford English Dictionary also has scraughed, scrinched, scritched, scrooched, sprainged, spreathed, throughed, and thrutched. It includes, too, a single instance of the ten-letter word scraunched, from the 1620 English translation of Don Quixote, a novel by the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes. Yet I cannot see how the suffix -ed can be anything but a syllable in its own right. Thus I suggest the plural nouns straights and strengths (nine letters) are the longest.

More on the subject of no vowels....

Additional to my recent comments on the longest word without a vowel .....

Words without vowels

A large number of Modern English words replace the 'ee' or 'eye' sound with the letter Y, such as try, sky, why, gym, hymn, lynx, myth, myrrh, pygmy, flyby, and syzygy. The longest such word in common use is rhythms, and the longest such word in Modern English is the obsolete 17th-century word symphysy. (If archaic words and spellings are considered, there are many more, the longest perhaps being twyndyllyngs, the plural of twyndyllyng.)

In the computer game The 7th Guest, one of the puzzles involves a vowelless sentence,

Shy gypsy slyly spryly tryst by my crypt.

More English Wordplay

Some weeks ago I spoke on the oddities of the English language and here is a quick thought to mull over.

Many pages have been dedicated to the longest and shortest words, those with the fewest syllables or conversely the most. For years I have tried to find the the longest English word which consists of just one syllable and have never found one longer (or even as long) than STRAIGHTS (nine letters).

Any ideas?