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.
Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsano… pterygon (182 letters, 78 syllables) This candidate for the longest word in the world originated from a Greek play written by Aristophanes in 391 BC. To this day, it remains the longest word in Ancient Greek literature.
An English word of 189, 819 letters
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!
The word, first published in 391 BC is called “Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsan… pterygon”. The Greek word counts to 171 letters, which translates to 183 letters in English.
It's Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. This 1,000-foot hill near the township Porangahau holds the Guinness World Record for longest place name with 85 characters. Locals call it Taumata or Taumata Hill.
isoleucine (189, 819 letters)
The longest word in English has 189,819 letters and takes 3 hours to pronounce. This is a technical term for the chemical composition of titin. Titin is the largest known protein responsible for maintaining the passive elasticity of the muscles.
So what's the word? Wikipedia's says that it's "Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl ... isoleucine" (ellipses necessary), which is the "chemical name of titin, the largest known protein." Also, there's some dispute about whether this is really a word.
As we saw at the start of our hunt, the longest word according to a lot of sources is the technical name for the protein titin. It is the same across all languages and has nearly 200,000 letters. Here's a snippet of the first 4,000 characters!
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is used to describe something that is extremely good, super, amazing, or excellent. It is a real world and is listed in most dictionaries. It was made famous in the 1964 Disney movie Mary Poppins which features a song that uses the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
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.
If you need to refer to the disease, pneumoconiosis is shorter and means much the same. Or you could use the popular terms silicosis or black lung.
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", the 34-letter title of a song from the movie Mary Poppins, does appear in several dictionaries, but only as a proper noun defined in reference to the song title. The attributed meaning is "a word that you say when you don't know what to say."
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word entered in the most trusted English dictionaries.
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.
isoleucine. Note the ellipses. All told, the full chemical name for the human protein titin is 189,819 letters, and takes up to three-and-a-half hours to pronounce.
An old riddle asks, “Can you name a word with three consecutive double letters?” One possible answer is WOOLLEN - 'double U, double O, double L, …' A more satisfying solution is BOOKKEEPER (or BOOKKEEPING), the only common words with a consecutive triple double.
methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl… At over 180,000 letters long, the chemical name of the protein titin is often said to technically be the longest English word. If spoken out loud, this word takes over three hours to say!
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.
Near Porangahau in Hawke's Bay is an unassuming hill known as "Taumata whakatangi hangakoauau o tamatea turi pukakapiki maunga horo nuku pokai whenua kitanatahu", which translates into English as "the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as 'landeater', ...