You may have heard that the longest word in the world is antidisestablishmentarianism. This 28-letter word, which is the name of a movement in 19th century England against the disestablishment of the Church of England, sure is a mouthful. Gleeful middle schoolers love to say it because once you know this word, you must truly have mastered the language.
There’s just one problem: it’s not the longest word. No one is quite sure where it started, but the idea of antidisestablishmentarianism being the longest word is a linguistic myth. So what is the longest word?
Well, that question causes some trouble. The fact is that many languages are agglutinative. That means words can be created by just jamming other, smaller words together. A famous example of this is German, which has a reputation for having words for everything. The official longest German word at 63 letters used to be the name of a beef label law: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. The law went away in 2013, however, and this word was struck from the books.
Because German words can be made by mashing smaller words together, they can technically stretch to infinity. And German isn’t alone in this (nor is it even the most impressive); languages including Finnish, Estonian and English can all produce words that are infinitely long. Therefore, the longest word is infinitely long. Case closed.
Still here? OK, fine, that’s kind of cheating. There must be impressively long words that actually exist. Here are a few contenders.
The Longest Word In The World(?)
1. methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl…isoleucine
You’ll notice there’s an ellipsis here, and that’s because this word, in total, is 189,819 letters long, and it’s the chemical name for the largest known protein, titin. Technical words can grow to enormous lengths, but they also kind of suck all the fun out of this question.
2. निरन्तरान्धकारित-दिगन्तर-कन्दलदमन्द-सुधारस-बिन्दु-सान्द्रतर-घनाघन-वृन्द-सन्देहकर-स्यन्दमान-मकरन्द-बिन्दु-बन्धुरतर-माकन्द-तरु-कुल-तल्प-कल्प-मृदुल-सिकता-जाल-जटिल-मूल-तल-मरुवक-मिलदलघु-लघु-लय-कलित-रमणीय-पानीय-शालिका-बालिका-करार-विन्द-गलन्तिका-गलदेला-लवङ्ग-पाटल-घनसार-कस्तूरिकातिसौरभ-मेदुर-लघुतर-मधुर-शीतलतर-सलिलधारा-निराकरिष्णु-तदीय-विमल-विलोचन-मयूख-रेखापसारित-पिपासायास-पथिक-लोकान्
This Sanskrit word has the prestige of being the Guinness Book of World Records’ longest word. At 195 characters (it’s 428 when transliterated into the roman writing system), this is more of a sentence than an actual word. It has the distinction of being the longest word in all of literature, appearing in the 1970 book Varadāmbikā Pariṇaya Campū by Tirumalāmbā. The translation is also pretty long:
“In it, the distress, caused by thirst, to travellers, was alleviated by clusters of rays of the bright eyes of the girls; the rays that were shaming the currents of light, sweet and cold water charged with the strong fragrance of cardamom, clove, saffron, camphor and musk and flowing out of the pitchers (held in) the lotus-like hands of maidens (seated in) the beautiful water-sheds, made of the thick roots of vetiver mixed with marjoram, (and built near) the foot, covered with heaps of couch-like soft sand, of the clusters of newly sprouting mango trees, which constantly darkened the intermediate space of the quarters, and which looked all the more charming on account of the trickling drops of the floral juice, which thus caused the delusion of a row of thick rainy clouds, densely filled with abundant nectar.”
(Video) ASMR 1hr Reading the longest word in English | 1st hour
3. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Appearing in the Oxford English Dictionary, this 45-letter word for a disease is the longest English word that is defined in a major dictionary. It’s a technical word referring to the lung disease more commonly known as silicosis. Despite being in the dictionary, the word was originally made up by the president of the National Puzzlers’ League. All words are made up by someone, but this word’s length is particularly artificial.
4. supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Speaking of long words that exist for the sole purpose of being long, this term is very famous as a song from Mary Poppins. It doesn’t seem to have much of a meaning to it, besides its ability to make you sound precocious, but it certainly is fun to say.
5. nghiêng
OK, so this clearly isn’t the longest word in the world. But at just seven letters long, this word has the distinction of being the longest word in Vietnamese. That also means it’s the shortest longest word that exists. Arguably, nghiêng is a single morpheme, not a word, but Vietnamese is an “isolating language.” Instead of combining prefixes and suffixes to create new words, Vietnamese uses multiple small words that combine to change the meaning. This only works if your definition of a “word” is any combination of letters surrounded by spaces, however.
As you can probably tell, the definition of a “word” is pretty loose. Depending on how you define the criteria, the longest word will change. There are long place names, massive agglutinative words in other languages, words that contain entire sentences, and more that you could consider in your efforts to find what counts as “the longest word.” In the end, it becomes a mostly arbitrary decision. Isn’t language weird?
Note: An earlier version of this article did not mention that“pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” is an artificially long word.
FAQs
What does lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsano pterygon mean? ›
Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsano...pterygon. 183. A fictional dish of food. Longest word coined by a major author, the longest word ever to appear in literature. Contrived nonce word; not in dictionary; Ancient Greek transliteration.
What word has 189,819 letters? ›1. methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl…isoleucine. You'll notice there's an ellipsis here, and that's because this word, in total, is 189,819 letters long, and it's the chemical name for the largest known protein, titin.
What is a 190000 letter word? ›The longest English word is also the longest word in the world, with almost 190,000 letters. It is the chemical name for titin, the largest protein known. The longest word in the English dictionary however, is the 45-letter word "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis", which refers to a lung disease.
What word has 52 letters? ›Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic. This is the longest word in English which is composed of seven words. This 52-letter word was coined by Dr. Edward Strother to describe the spa waters in Bath, England.
Is Floccinaucinihilipilification a real word? ›The word "floccinaucinihilipilification" means "the estimation of something as worthless." It's an 18th-century coinage that combines four Latin prefixes meaning "nothing."
What's the longest word in Russian? ›Most likely one of the longest Russian words is a chemical term, тетрагидропиранилциклопентилтетрагидропиридопиридиновая (tetragidropiranilciklopentiltetragidropiridopiridinovaya), which contains 55 letters. It was used in Russian patent RU2285004C2 (granted and published in 2006).
What is the 2 longest word in English? ›- 1 Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (forty-five letters): ...
- 2 Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (thirty letters): ...
- 3 Floccinaucinihilipilification (twenty-nine letters): ...
- 4 Antidisestablishmentarianism (twenty-eight letters):
floccinaucinihilipilification (29).
What is the longest P word? ›Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a New Latin word made up of five parts. The combining form pneumono- means “lung.” The word ultramicroscopic refers to something so small that it can't be seen by normal microscopes. Silica is a material often found in sand and flint.
What starts with P and ends with E? ›Q: What starts with "P", ends with "E", and has millions of letters? A: The "Post Office"!
How do you write 190 0000 in words? ›
Using the place value chart, we can identify the value of each digit in 190000 and convert the numerals to words. 190000 in words is written as One Hundred and Ninety Thousand.
Is there a word with 42 letters? ›Parastratiosphecomyia stratiosphecomyioides is a species of soldier fly. With 42 letters, it has the distinction of having the longest scientific name of any extant animal.
How many letters is Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic? ›Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic (52 letters) In the 17th century, Dr. Edward Strother coined the 52-letter word aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic. The word is used to describe the spa waters in Bath, England.
What is a rare 5 letter word? ›- ADIEU. Adieu means the same as goodbye. ...
- TARES. Any of various vetch plants, such as Vicia hirsuta (hairy tare) of Eurasia and North Africa.
- SOARE. ...
- DUCAT. ...
- OUIJA. ...
- CAROM. ...
- ERGOT. ...
- CRAIC.
In dictionaries, j, q, and z are found the least, but some of the words are rarely used. And if you value the opinion of cryptologists (people who study secret codes and communication), x, q, and z make the fewest appearances in the writing scene.
What is German longest word? ›1. Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung (36) Officially recognised by the Duden - Germany's pre-eminent dictionary - as the longest word in German, Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung is a 36-letter, tongue-tying way of describing a rather, mundane everyday concept: motor vehicle liability insurance.
What does it mean 42? ›42 and the asterisk symbol
Forty-two is the ASCII code for the symbol * also known as the asterisk. This symbol is often thought to translate to anything or everything. In this instance, 42 = everything, the meaning of life.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a phobia, meaning the fear of long words, ironically, it is a long word itself. The phobia isn't considered an actual phobia, but more of a social phobia. This is the second longest word in the English language. Another word for the phobia is Sesquipedalophobia.
What are the 20 difficult words? ›- Colonel.
- Worcestershire.
- Mischievous.
- Draught.
- Quinoa.
- Onomatopoeia.
- Scissors.
- Anemone.
EUNOIA is the shortest word in English which has all five vowels.
Does any word have every letter? ›
Pangrams are words or sentences containing every letter of the alphabet at least once; the best known English example being A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog .
Does Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious have all letters? ›No. It does not contain B, H, J, K, M, N, Q, V, W, Y or Z.
What is the longest Italian word? ›Language/Italian/Vocabulary/longest-word
The longest Italian word is a 26-letter-long : Precipitevolissimevolmente (It means "in a way like someone acts very hastily")
The longest word in Korean is 청자양인각연당초상감모란문은구대접. It is 17 syllable blocks – which doesn't look very long to anyone who doesn't read Korea. But it has 46 Hangul letters – so that's pretty long! It describes a kind of ceramic bowl.
What is the longest Ukrainian word? ›Longest word – 34 letters
The longest word in Ukrainian is an outstanding 34 letters long! “Нікотинамідаденіндинуклеотидфосфат” which translates to 'Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide Phosphate'. The word is not used in regular conversation outside of a science lab, but it is still impressive.
otherwise known as the dreaded tobacco mosaic virus. It appeared in all its lettery splendor in 1964 in a reference source for chemists, "Chemical Abstracts." It is one thousand, one hundred and eighty five letters long.
What big words sound smart? ›The top five words most likely to make someone sound smarter are “articulate,” “accolade,” “brevity,” “adulation,” and “anomaly.” But 58% of the people in the survey admitted they'd used a word to sound smarter, even though they didn't know what it meant.
What are 10 words without vowels? ›The words without vowels are why, hmm, hymn, xlnt, wynd, myths, thy, dry, cyst, etc.
What was the first cuss word invented? ›Fart, as it turns out, is one of the oldest rude words we have in the language: Its first record pops up in roughly 1250, meaning that if you were to travel 800 years back in time just to let one rip, everyone would at least be able to agree upon what that should be called.
How old is the word f? ›An English cookery manuscript from the 1300s. As you can see, these require a lot of time to work through. Historians generally agree that "fuck" hit its stride in the 15th and 16th centuries as a familiar word for sexual intercourse, and from there it evolved into the vulgarity we know today.
What is the rarest word in English? ›
1. Serendipity. This word appears in numerous lists of untranslatable words and is a mystery mostly for non native speakers of English.
What is the bad Q word? ›Somehow all Aliens knew the bad words. The Q word is Quoowaffle.
What is the D word? ›d-word (plural d-words) (euphemistic) The word damn.
What does the F word actually mean? ›It is remotely derived from the Latin futuere and Old German ficken/fucken meaning 'to strike or penetrate', which had the slang meaning to copulate. Eric Partridge, a famous etymologist, said that the German word was related to the Latin words for pugilist, puncture, and prick.
What starts with letter T is? ›Some of the T words for kids are Temple, tangy, together, thorough, through, think, tank, torn, timber, to, teacher, tasty, trip, travel, tell, tip, trick, tomb, teak, rhumb, tickle, tree, terrain, tent, tailor, tail, test, time, table, thank, tomato, etc.
What begins with T ends with T? ›The answer is “Teapot”. The word “Teapot” starts with the letter “T”. The word “Teapot” ends with the letter “T”.
What has 5 letters and ends with E? ›- abase.
- abate.
- abele.
- abide.
- abode.
- above.
- abuse.
- achee.
...
a hundred quintillion
- ...
- 1,000,000: a million.
- 1,000,000,000: a billion.
- 1,000,000,000,000: a trillion.
- 1,000,000,000,000,000: a quadrillion.
- 1,000,000,000,000,000,000: a quintillion.
- ...
Cardinal: 40000000000000 can be written as Forty trillion.
How is $81 written? ›81 in words is written as Eighty-one.
Is there a 60 letter word? ›
The longest Dutch word according to Lingo
The winner of said competition was (brace yourself) kindercarnavalsoptochtvoorbereidingswerkzaamhedencomitéleden at a whopping 60 letters!
The longest word entered in most standard English dictionaries is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis with 45 letters. Our definition is "a lung disease caused by inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust." The entry for this word can be found in our Medical Dictionary.
What is the longest word with 1909 letters? ›*Wikipedia and a few other sources actually list Methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamyl... serine, a tryptophan synthetase protein, as the longest published word at 1,909 letters.
Is there a word with 189819 letters? ›1. methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl…isoleucine. You'll notice there's an ellipsis here, and that's because this word, in total, is 189,819 letters long, and it's the chemical name for the largest known protein, titin.
What is the 189 819 letter word full? ›An English word of 189, 819 letters
The longest word in the world is the English term: "methionylthreonylthreonyl(...) isoleucine". This term, which has no less than 189, 819 letters, is the chemical name of the largest protein: titin. It would take three hours to recite it from beginning to end!
Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl… isoleucine is the chemical name for the protein of “titin” also known as “connectin.” The largest known protein that consists of 26, 926 amino acids is made up of 189, 819 letters and can take about three hours to pronounce.
What is the word that takes 3 hours to say? ›The word is 189,819 letters long. It's actually the name of a giant protein called Titin. Proteins are usually named by mashing-up the names of the chemicals making them. And since Titin is the largest protein ever discovered, its name had to be equally as large.
What is the full meaning of Honorificabilitudinitatibus? ›Honorificabilitudinitatibus (honōrificābilitūdinitātibus, Latin pronunciation: [hɔnoːrɪfɪkaːbɪlɪtuːdɪnɪˈtaːtɪbʊs]) is the dative and ablative plural of the medieval Latin word honōrificābilitūdinitās, which can be translated as "the state of being able to achieve honours".
What is the 183 letter word in English? ›The longest word in the English language, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, won primary school speller Jemimah Elise Sampson, the East Coast Radio's Last Kid Standing title, as seen in the video below published by the East Coast Radio.
What is the longest Chinese word? ›Jammu-sang, Lausanne, Jiumei, Tudanchoji Nyima. It is the Chinese character for "biang", and it is made up of 56 pen strokes.
What is the 2nd longest word in English? ›
- 1 Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (forty-five letters): ...
- 2 Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (thirty letters): ...
- 3 Floccinaucinihilipilification (twenty-nine letters): ...
- 4 Antidisestablishmentarianism (twenty-eight letters):
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word entered in the most trusted English dictionaries. The definition is "a lung disease caused by inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust."
What is the shortest word of all time? ›The shortest word is a. Some might wonder about the word I since it consists of one letter, too. In sound, a is shorter because it is a monophthong (consists of one vowel), while I is a diphthong. Both do consist of one letter in the English writing system, and in most fonts I is the narrowest letter.
How many syllables are in honorificabilitudinitatibus? ›Honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters, 13 syllables)
How do you say 11 in word? ›11 in words can be written as Eleven. Using a place value chart, we can easily derive the number 11 in words. If you have 11 coins, you can say, “I have Eleven coins with me”.
What is the spelling of 18? ›So, let us expand these digits as per the place values and combine the results to get the final number. Therefore, 18 in words = Eighteen. Thus, the word form of 18 is Eighteen.