What is the longest word in the English Dictionary?

Answer 1

Look up the other 80 times this question has been asked this week.

Answer 2

It depends . . .

It might be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (which appears in the Oxford English Dictionary), unless you want to count names of diseases (such as
'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis',
defined by the OED as "a factitious word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust' but occurring chiefly as an instance of a very long word"), places (such as
'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch',
a village in Wales), chemical compounds (apparently there is one that is 1,913 letters long), and also a few words found only in Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

Other words famous for being sesquipedalian:

antidisestablishmentarianism ("opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England")
floccinaucinihilipilification
honorificabilitudinitatibus (Which appears in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, and which has been cited as [dubious] evidence that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays)

Or perhaps smiles is the longest word — after all, there is a mile between the first letter and the last.

Answer 3

The longest word in any major English language dictionary is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a 45-letter word supposed to refer to a lung disease, but research has discovered that this word was originally intended as a hoax.

The Guinness Book of Records, in its 1992 and subsequent editions, declared the "longest real word" in the English language to be floccinaucinihilipilification at 29 letters. Defined as "the act of estimating (something) as worthless", its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741.

Antidisestablishmentarianism (a 19th century movement in England opposed to the separation of church and state) at 28 letters is one of English's longest words.

The longest word which appears in William Shakespeare's works is the 27-letter honorificabilitudinitatibus, appearing in Love's Labour's Lost. This is arguably an English word (rather than Latin), but only because he used it.

The humuhumu-nukunuku-a-pua‘a, or reef triggerfish, is Hawaii's official state fish. At 21 letters (22 counting the okina) it is one of the best known very long one-word names for an animal. It is often asserted that "the name is longer than the fish."

Although only fourteen letters long, sesquipedalian deserves a mention. It is derived from a nonce word used by the Roman author Horace, in his work Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry).

Answer 4

The longest word in any major English language dictionary is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a 45-letter word supposed to refer to a lung disease, but research has discovered that this word was originally intended as a hoax. It has since been used in a close approximation of its originally intended context, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim.

Answer 5

It depends . . .
It might be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (which appears in the Oxford English Dictionary), unless you want to count names of diseases (such as 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis', defined by the OED as "a factitious word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust' but occurring chiefly as an instance of a very long word"), places (such as 'Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch', a village in Wales), chemical compounds (apparently there is one that is 1,913 letters long), and also a few words found only in Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

Other words famous for being sesquipedalian:

antidisestablishmentarianism ("opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England")
floccinaucinihilipilification
honorificabilitudinitatibus (Which appears in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, and which has been cited as [dubious] evidence that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays)

Answer 6

methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutaminylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglysylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolylphenylalanylyalylthreonylleucylglcycylaspartylprolylglicylisoleucyglutamylglutaminlserylleucyllysysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucyl..... (I could keep going...) The word consists of 1,909 letters. It is the term for the formula C1289H2051N3430375S8. A Tryptophan synthetase A protein, an enzyme that has 267 amino acids. The word is found at the back of many dictionaries.

Answer 7

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

:::::defined by the OED as "a factitious word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust'


Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

a village in Wales), chemical compounds (apparently there is one that is 1,913 letters long), and also a few words found only in Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

antidisestablishmentarianism

Answer 8

Anit-disenstablishmentarianism

Answer 9

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis - 45 letters.

Answer 10

the longest one syllable word is
screeched

but the longest word is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis