What is the longest word in the English language?

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by Mya Kagan (whyzz writer) >> more about the author

How high are you able to count? To ten? To twenty? To one hundred? – Can you count high enough to cover all of the letters in the longest word of the English language??

There are a few different answers about what word is the very longest. Many people agree that the top two contestants are “floccinaucinihilipilification” (29 letters) and “antidisestablishmentarianism” (28 letters). The reason the 29 letter word doesn’t just win automatically is that some people don’t consider it a word because it was created by putting together a few other words; some people say that makes it not quite a “regular” word.

Even though these two huge mouthfuls are often cited as the longest words, there are actually a few others that are longer! Most of these are place names or scientific words that lots of people don’t count, because they are considered more like “names” than “words,” and they often don’t appear in the dictionary. The longest of these is a kind of scientific protein too big to even name, because it has over 1,900 letters! – That’s more than the number of letters in this answer!!

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which has 45 letters, is also sometimes considered the very longest word in English. However, many people don’t consider it a valid contestant because it’s believed to have been coined simply for the sake of being the longest word!

Tongue Twisters!

Can you pronounce “floccinaucinihilipilification” or “antidisestablishmentarianism”?? If so, maybe you can try using one or both in a sentence! – Floccinaucinihilipilification means “the action of estimating as worthless” while “antidisestablishmentarianism” refers to “the movement that goes against disestablishment.” (If you don’t have a very good idea of what that means, it’s okay – lots of grown-ups don’t fully get it either!)

What other long words or names have you seen or heard about? There are some countries where places have names that are over 80 letters long! Because these are place names, they aren’t usually counted as “longest words,” but if you had to ask someone how to get there, you might think it actually should count!

Posted by amishjc on 2009-09-04 15:42:55

Based on my understanding and what i had learn it is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis