whats the longest word in the dictionary and what does it mean?

Question

I know... do you?

Answer 1

There are seemingly endless debates over which is the longest word in English, demonstrating that the idea of what constitutes a word is not as straightforward as it seems. English allows new words to be formed by construction; long words are frequently coined; place names may be considered words; technical terms may be very long. It is difficult to know where to draw the line. Note also that length is defined in terms of orthography and number of written letters, not phonology and the number of phonemes.

Major dictionaries
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 meaning, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim. See the separate article for details.

The Oxford English Dictionary contains pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters).

The longest non-technical word 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.[1][2] In recent times its usage has been recorded in the proceedings of the United States Senate by Senator Robert Byrd [3], and at the White House by Bill Clinton's press secretary Mike McCurry, albeit sarcastically.[4]

Anti­dis­establishment­arianism (a nineteenth century movement in England opposed to the separation of church and state) at 28 letters is still in colloquial currency for being one of the longest words in the English language.

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 it was Shakespeare who used it.

The humuhumu-nukunuku-a-pua‘a, or reef triggerfish, is Hawaii's official state fish.[5] At 22 letters (including the okina) it is one of the best known very long one-word names for an animal. It is occasionally quipped 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). The quote is as follows: "Proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba," which means, "He throws aside his paint pots and his words that are a foot and a half long." The Oxford English Dictionary lists sesquipedalianism ("the practice of using words one and a half feet long"), and further derivations can be created as described in the Constructions section below.

Coinages
In his play Assemblywomen, the ancient Greek comedic poet Aristophanes created a word of 183 letters describing a dish by stringing together its ingredients.

James Joyce, known for his distinctive style, made up nine 100- and one 101-letter long words in his novel Finnegans Wake, the most famous of which is Bababadal­gharagh­takammin­arronn­konn­bronn­tonn­erronn­tuonn­thunn­trovarrhoun­awnskawn­toohoo­hoordenen­thurnuk. Appearing on the first page, it allegedly is the symbolic thunderclap representing the fall of Adam and Eve. As this word appears nowhere else except in reference to this passage, it is generally not accepted as a real word. Sylvia Plath made mention to that word in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar as Esther Greenwood, the protagonist, was reading Finnegans Wake.

Some editions of the Guinness Book of Records mention praetertranssubstantiationalistically (37 letters), used in Mark McShane's Untimely Ripped (1963). In its 1992 and previous editions, Guinness declared the "longest real word" in the English language to be floccinaucinihilipilification. More recent editions of the book have acknowledged pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. [6]

The well-known song title from the movie Mary Poppins, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", with 34 letters, does appear in several dictionaries, but only as a proper noun, and defined in reference to the song title. Hence it may well be dismissed as not a real word, particularly since the song assigns no meaning to it other than to say it's impressive.

In the 1970s, there were advertisements for Lip­smackin­thirst­quenchin­acetastin­motivatin­good­buzzin­cool­talkin­high­walkin­fast­livin­ever­givin­cool­fizzin Pepsi, coining a 100-letter term. In 1975, the 71-letter Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun was used in a McDonald's Restaurant advertisement to describe the Big Mac. [7]

The character Big Bird of Sesame Street sings the Latin alphabet, thinking it is a word. He reads abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz aloud as /æbkədɛfgiʤɛkl̩mn̩ɔpkwɝːˈstuːvwɪksɪz/ and breaks into song (ABC-DEF-GHI).

Henry Carey's farce Chrononhotonthologos (1743) holds the opening line: "Aldiborontiphoscophornio! Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?"

Constructions
English is a language which permits the legitimate extension of existing words to serve new purposes by the addition of prefixes and suffixes. This is sometimes referred to as agglutinative 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:

establish
to set up, put in place, or institute (originally from the Latin stāre, to stand)
dis-establish
ending the established status of a body, in particular a church, given such status by law, such as the Church of England
disestablish-ment
the separation of church and state (specifically in this context it is the political movement of the 1860s in Britain)
anti-disestablishment
opposition to disestablishment
antidisestablishment-arian
an advocate of opposition to disestablishment (alternatively, but less likely and quite similar in meaning, "opposed to disestablishmentarians", depending on what "anti-" is taken to belong to)
antidisestablishmentarian-ism
the movement or ideology of advocates of opposition to disestablishment; the movement or ideology that opposes disestablishment
Of course, the process need not stop there: prefixes like neo- and contra- can be added, and -istically can be used in place of -ism. Given that there is essentially no limit to their length, it is dubious whether any of them can lay a claim to being the "longest" word.

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—it is a kind of amphipod. However, this name, proposed by B. Dybowski, was invalidated by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature.

Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic, describing the spa waters at Bath, England, is cited in some editions of the Guinness Book of Records as the longest word in English,[8] and is attributed to Dr Edward Strother (1675-1737). The word is composed of the following elements:

Aequeo: equal (Latin, aequo[1])
Salino: containing salt (Latin, salīnus)
Calcalino: calcium (Latin, calx)
Ceraceo: "waxy" (Latin, cera)
Aluminoso: alumina (Latin)
Cupreo: from Copper
Vitriolic: containing vitriol (in this case Copper sulphate pentahydrate)
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. In British usage, it would be 106(6560) = 1039360.

Names of chemical compounds can be extremely long if written as one word, which 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 such words as Methionyl­threonyl­threonyl­...­isoleucine (189,819 letters).

The Book of Lists claims the longest English word is 305 letters and describes a combination of over 500 amino acids.

Place names
The longest place name in the world spelled in English is Krungthepmahanakornamornratanakosinmahintarayutthayamahadilokphopnopparatrajathaniburiromudomrajaniwesmahasatharnamornphimarnavatarnsathitsakkattiyavisanukamprasit in Thailand, although it is more commonly known as Bangkok.

There is some debate as to whether a place name is a legitimate word. However, the longest officially recognized place name in an English-speaking country is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu (85 letters) which is a hill in New Zealand.

The longest place name in the United States (45 letters) is Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, a lake in Webster, Massachusetts. This is incorrectly said to be Algonquin for "you fish your side of the water, I fish my side of the water, nobody fishes the middle". It actually means "Englishmen at Manchaug at the Fishing Place at the Boundary". The lake is known to Americans as Webster Lake. 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 station sign at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in North WalesThe 58 character name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is the famous name of a town in Anglesey in the United Kingdom. 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 station name in the UK, at 68 letters, is also in Wales: Gorsafawddacha'idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion was specifically contrived to "beat" Llanfairpwllgwyngyll.

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.

It is questionable whether any of the above (with the exception of New­town­mount­kennedy) are properly considered English words, being derived from Māori, Nipmuck, Welsh and Irish words respectively, or being a conjunction of individual English words.

Scrabble
The longest technically legal Scrabble word in North American play is ethyl­enediamine­tetra­acetates (28 letters). It is the plural of a word found in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, which was the dictionary of reference in North American Scrabble play for base words of at least 10 letters, and their inflections of at least 10 letters, until June 16, 2003. Naturally, this 15-letter plus word is 'legal' in name only, since it can never be used in a game for the very simple reason that it would not fit on the board. There are many 15-letter words; the highest-scoring word on a Scrabble board is oxyphenbutazone (1458 points) when played across a set of three triple word scores. Arguably, however, higher scoring at 1674 points is sesquioxidizing (which scores 62 in its own right, but considerably higher when tripled three times - and possibly using other premium squares). This word does not exist in its own right in places like Webster's dictionary - however the roots of the word do see e.g. sesquioxide and oxidizing. For words that exist in other dictionaries, benzoxycamphors scores 59 before inflation.

Words with certain characteristics of notable length
The longest word in the English language containing only one vowel is strengths, while scraunched is the longest monosyllabic word in current usage. Twyndyllyngs is the longest word without any of the common vowel letters a, e, i, o, or u (although y functions as a vowel in this word). Euouae, at six letters long, is the longest English word consisting only of vowels, and the word with the most consecutive vowels. It is a medieval musical term. However, u was often used interchangeably with v, and the variant "evovae" is occasionally used.

The longest words with no repeated letters are dermatoglyphics, misconjugatedly and uncopyrightable. [10]

The longest word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops, a grass genus. The seven-letter addeems (from the archaic verb addeem, meaning to award), alloquy (an archaic or literary word for an address), beefily (in a beefy manner), billowy (like a wave or surge), dikkops (a South African bird) and gimmors (plural of gimmor, an old-fashioned word for a mechanical contrivance) are also close.

The longest word typable with only the left hand (using conventional hand placement on a QWERTY keyboard) is tesseradecades or the more common but sometimes hyphenated sweaterdresses. Conversely, using the right hand alone, the longest word that can be typed is johnny-jump-up, or, excluding hyphens, hypolimnion. The longest word typable using only the top row of letters is not typewriter, as is commonly believed: teetertotter is longer, though sometimes hyphenated. The longest words typable by alternating left and right hands are antiskepticism and leucocytozoans respectively. [11]

The longest word with the vowels in order is abstemiously, although arseniously and facetiously are close.

Jokes
A popular joke answer to the "longest word" question is the word smiles, credited as the longest word because there is a mile between each s. Of course, by this reckoning the word beleaguered, which contains a league, is even longer.

A popular playground joke in Britain states that the longest word in the English language is elastic because it will always stretch.

American comedian Red Skelton claimed that the longest word is the one following the announcement, “And now a word from our sponsor”!

Answer 2

Longest Word In History

Answer 3

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
whats the longest word in the dictionary and what does it mean?
I know... do you?

Answer 4

Floccinaucinihilipilification listen (help·info) is the act or habit of estimating or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by said means.

At 29 letters, it is the longest non-technical word in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which presents it "as enumerated in a well-known rule from the Eton Latin Grammar". The OED dates its first use in literature at 1741 in William Shenstone's Works in Prose and Verse: "I loved him for nothing so much as his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money".

Though the OED gives no specifics on its derivation, the word is said to have been invented as an erudite joke by a student of Eton College, who, upon consulting a Latin textbook, found four words connoting 'nothing' or 'worthless', combined them, and added verb endings:

floccus, -i a wisp or piece of wool, used idiomatically as flocci non facio ("I don't care [one thread]")
naucum, -i a trifle
nihilum, -i nothing; something valueless
pilus, -i a hair; a bit or a whit; something small and insignificant
It is often spelled with hyphens, and has even spawned the back formations floccinaucical (inconsiderable or trifling) and floccinaucity (a thing of small importance). The OED appears to have overlooked floccinaucinihilipilificatious, which has one letter more than the nominal form, and means "small" or "insignificant."

The word is sometimes misspelled as floccinaucinihilipipification or floccipausinihilipilification.

Answer 5

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 meaning, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim. See the separate article for details.

Answer 6

Super- Kala- Fredulistic-Espe- Ala- Docious

Answer 7

Listen - the people on this site have trouble with any words with more than 3 letters.

Answer 8

Smiles= there is a mile between the s's It refers to the upward movement of the corners of your mouth when you are happy

Answer 9

supercalafreagelisticexpialedocious
it means nothing
sorry, very random

Answer 10

ijustmadethisstupidanswersoicouldgetpointstowardmysecondlevel


it means: have no idea