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Classroom Activities:
Word Funs for
English Classrooms:
Word
Records
Do you
remember learning what you thought was the longest word in
the English language? Was it
ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM? Or the similarly long
SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS?
There
are longer ones...
Most
very long words only occur in one or two dictionaries, and
often they are debatably not words at all. For example,
ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM has possibly never really
been used to mean "the belief which opposes removing the tie
between church and state." Certainly 99 in 100 times it is
used as an example of a long word. And who says you can't
put NON– (for example) on the beginning to make it even
longer?
This
problem is even more evident in chemical names. Most
chemicals are named using a systematic naming system which
methodically describes the molecule's structure. Some
molecules, such as proteins, are huge, so it is possible to
come up with genuine words containing millions of letters.
But of course no chemist uses these really long names in
practice.
Here
we look at some of the longest words in English
dictionaries, and discuss whether they should be considered
to be real words. Interesting long chemical terms and place
names are listed separately afterwards. The numbers indicate
the length (number of letters) of the word that follows.
Longest Words:
(45)
PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS (also
spelled PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOKONIOSIS)
= a lung disease caused by breathing in particles of
siliceous volcanic dust.
This
is the longest word in any English dictionary. However, it
was coined by Everett Smith, the President of The National
Puzzlers' League, in 1935 purely for the purpose of
inventing a new "longest word". The Oxford English
Dictionary described the word as factitious. Nevertheless it
also appears in the Webster's, Random House, and Chambers
dictionaries.
(37)
HEPATICOCHOLANGIOCHOLECYSTENTEROSTOMIES = a surgical
creation of a connection between the gall bladder and a
hepatic duct and between the intestine and the gall bladder.
This
is the longest word in Gould's Medical Dictionary.
(34)
SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS = song title from
the Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins.
It is
in the Oxford English Dictionary.
"But
then one day I learned a word
That
saved me achin' nose,
The
biggest word you ever 'eard,
And
this is 'ow it goes:
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!"
(30)
HIPPOPOTOMONSTROSESQUIPEDALIAN = pertaining to a very
long word.
From
Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous
Words.
(29)
FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION = an estimation of
something as worthless.
This
is the longest word in the first edition of the Oxford
English Dictionary. Interestingly the most common letter in
English, E, does not appear in this word at all, whilst I
occurs a total of nine times. The word dates back to 1741.
The 1992 Guinness Book of World Records calls
floccinaucinihilipilification the longest real word in
the Oxford English Dictionary, and refers to
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis as the
longest made-up one.
(28)
ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM = the belief which opposes
removing the tie between church and state.
Probably the most popular of the "longest words" in recent
decades.
(27)
HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS = honorableness.
The
word first appeared in English in 1599, and in 1721 was
listed by Bailey's Dictionary as the longest word in
English. It was used by Shakespeare in Love's Labor's Lost (Costard;
Act V, Scene I):
"O,
they have lived long on the alms-basket of words.
I
marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word;
for
thou art not so long by the head as
honorificabilitudinitatibus: thou art easier
swallowed than a flap-dragon."
Shakespeare does not use any other words over 17 letters in
length.
(27)
ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHICALLY
The
longest unhyphenated word in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary (10th Ed.), joint with
ethylenediaminetetraacetate (see below).
(27)
ANTITRANSUBSTANTIATIONALIST = one who doubts that
consecrated bread and wine actually change into the body and
blood of Christ.
(21)
DISPROPORTIONABLENESS and (21) INCOMPREHENSIBILITIES
These
are described by the 1992 Guinness Book of World Records as
the longest words in common usage.
Some
say SMILES is the longest word because there is a MILE
between the first and last letters!
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