Size Matters
Last time, I wrote about two-letter words. I subsequently came across this interesting entry, published back in June 2007 at Amazing Posts, which focused on words considerably longer. In fact the spotlight was on the longest words in the English language.
The longest word ever to appear in the English dictionary is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis at 45 letters long. This disease, an inflammation of the lungs caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, is also known by its shorter name, silicosis.
It is easy to imagine why no one remembers the longest word in second place.
Admittedly, once you get past pneumonoceteracetera, everything else is somewhat anticlimactic. But, for those who enjoy word play, there are a number of other interesting words to pull out on an exceedingly slow night when the only other option is reading Henry James.
Everyone knows that ‘e’ is the letter that appears most often in the English language. Simply because it is there, a number of authors have taken on the challenge of writing entire novels without using the letter ‘e’. The earliest, Gadsby, was penned by Ernest Vincent Wright back in 1939. In 1995, Gilbert Adair published A Void, a translation of George Perec’s French-language mystery, La Disparition. Neither the French nor English version contains the letter ‘e’.
So, down to the bite-sized, the longest English word that does not contain the letter ‘e’ is floccinaucinihilipilification. This one, meaning “the action or habit of estimating as worthless”, weighs in at a welterweight 29 letters.
If, by the way, you think you cannot do much with words like this, you are wrong. Take out a couple of affixes, then add in a couple of new ones and you get new, wonderfully evocative words: floccinaucical (“inconsiderable, trifling”) and floccinaucity (“a matter of small consequence”). You will note that neither contains the letter ‘e’.
Not quite the same challenge, but interesting still are dermatoglyphics, misconjugatedly and uncopyrightable, each 15 letters long, tied for the longest words in which no letter appears more than once.
Aegilops is the longest word with its letters arranged in alphabetical order. Spoonfed is the longest word with its letters arranged in reverse alphabetical order.
Esophagographers, 16 letter long, is the longest word in which each of its letters occurs twice.
And so it goes. And goes and goes, with the longest word in alphabetic order, the longest palindromic word, the longest homophonic anagrams, and – to really stretch the point – the longest words that consist of only letters with ascenders, descenders and dots in lower case (lighttight and hillypilly).
Well, for now, that’s about the size of it.
For those addicted to using Microsoft Office to communicate …
The only word cited above to not be adorned with a red-squiggly line underneath it is: Floccinaucinihilipilification.
(Although Firefox has just red-lined it).
Additionally, these words that Murray used also don’t make the Microsoft cut: palindromic & descenders.
(Interestingly, Firefox approves of these.)
Love the photo.
Why would one’s only option be reading Henry James? Everything else read? Stuck in a remote hotel room or cabin? When once that was the case for me, my only option was Barbara Cartland.