The Struggling Blogger

Saw this feature on the Yahoo! homepage about the longest English word, and I thought it would lead me to an article about, well, the longest English word of course.

Unfortunately, when I clicked on it, it led me to a page on Yahoo! Answers instead, with somebody asking on what is the longest English word, and a few answers from those who dared…

The longest English word, according to the best answer, is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanocon, which is “a word alleged to mean ‘a lung disease caused by the inhalation of volcanic ash, causing inflammation in the lungs,’” which came from this Wikipedia page where you’ll see more long English words.

There is another entry there which has 189,819 letters, and yet it wasn’t classified as a word and it still being disputed.

When we’re looking for long words, we can always find it in medical and science dictionary. I wonder why they always come up with hard to pronounce words?

For the young ‘uns (young ones), of course they could always settle with “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” as their longest English words.

And when I hear of this question, I always remember two simple answers:

The first one is, the longest English word is “smiles” simple, isn’t it? Easy to memorize, say and spell. Pretend you don’t know and ask me, “Why is ’smiles’ the longest English word?”

And I’ll answer… “Well, there is a ‘mile’ between the first and the last letter!”

Yet again, that is even disputed, by the entertainment and the advertising industry. The longest English word, they say, is “a word from our sponsors.”

True enough, haven’t you noticed? Everytime they go into a break they would say… ‘and now, a word from our sponsors’

Imagine that! ‘a word’ that lasts for more than 90 seconds!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 1:49 am and is filed under Uncategorized, internet, links, sources, thought & opinions.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.