Pseudo- is a combining form meaning “false, pretended, unreal.” We include pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism, another medical term, because this is one of the longest words to appear in major dictionaries that wasn’t created with length in mind. The word is traced to the ancient Roman poet Horace, who in a treatise on the art of poetry wrote that in certain circumstances, poets must avoid sesquipedalia verba, a Latin phrase meaning “words a foot and a half long. Do you have sesquipedalian tendencies? (We do.) Let’s look at a word related to the business of “longest words.” Sesquipedalianism is the tendency to use long words. The word, which was basically engineered for its length, refers to a lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust. According to many sources, it was coined around 1935 by Everett Smith, who at the time was the president of the National Puzzlers’ League. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, coming in at 45 letters long, is typically the biggest word you will find that actually appears in an English dictionary. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Because it is a scientific term, many would disqualify the Big M from actually taking the crown as English’s longest word. For obvious reasons, titin’s official name has never actually appeared in a dictionary or scientific text. If spoken out loud, this word takes over three hours to say! Its absurd length is due to the fact that proteins get their scientific names by combining the names of all of their joined amino acids together, and titin has quite a lot of them. methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl…Īt over 180,000 letters long, the chemical name of the protein titin is often said to technically be the longest English word. Should you count scientific words? Should obscure, rarely used words be included, or should we give the honor to a word people actually use? In the interest of fairness, our list includes scientific words, obscure words, and all of the absurdly long words stuck in between. In addition to pure length, we also tried to find:įiguring out which word is the longest of them all isn’t as simple as just counting letters, though. To express our love, we looked around for some of the biggest, most ludicrously long words in the English language. In fact, we are big word lovers in that we love really big words. It should come as no surprise that we are word lovers.
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