What is the longest word in English?

In Polish we have konstantynopolitanczykiewiczowianeczka :)

Dear Adam: Here is a URL to a lot of long words, most of them unlikely to be good for anything except for
word games. One of them has forty-five letters.

http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words11.html


http://www.dd.chalmers.se/~f95lith/longword.html

antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest one i know of that is in common use

just looked at your links wwh and there is antidisestablishmentarianism, sorry

>most of them unlikely to be good for anything except for word games.

with the notable exception of floccinaucinihilpilification, which has proved to be worthless in the extreme, to the point of being invaluable to me. [cross-threading to weakly themes and see also http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/)

edit: and it beats out that 'antidis-' word by one letter, which is why it gets the OED1 claim.
edit2: I know what you mean about a thrill -- mine now comes with saying floccinaucinihilipilification
edit3: actually, this is a subject that was covered by AWAD back in '97: http://www.wordsmith.org/awad/archives/0597

just like writing antidisestablishmentarianism, oooh, it gives me a thrill

Hey, tsuwm: Did you notice my discovery of etymology of "nauci" - it is genitive of "naucum"

I really like hippopotamusesquepedalian and hippopotamusesquepedalophobia. I'm being lazy and not looking up their spellings, but I'm in the ballpark.

If you bother going to Quinion, he has a word that's longer than the flocci one. Maybe I'll get a little energetic and go look it up.

I know what you mean about a thrill -- mine now comes with saying floccinaucinihilipilification

and how DO you say it?!

flox-in-ow-seenee-heelee-peelee-fee-cay-shun? am I close? and where does the principal accent fall? on the first syllable?

Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.