Longest Words In English And How They Are Formed

The English language is one dynamic area that has never been fully understood, not even by owners of the language.An interesting aspect of the language, however,is its flexibility in accommodating new things. (New words for the purpose of this article).

Wordsmithery or being a sesquipedalian can sometimes be fun.Such fun was particularly reflecting in the days when man was growing up in basic and high school.

Your prowess in writing big grammar meant you will always be approached by friends to write love letters for them.It was also another strategy to gain popularity and easily win elections at basic, high and probably, the tertiary level.

Infact,I remember I could spend hours doing further studies on long words, how and where to use them in my manifesto growing up as a student leader.And for obvious reasons,it did the magic!

Once upon a time and interesting enough, during such manifesto presentation,once you throw a long word, students go like,"hooooow".At a point, it matters less whether such words really exist or made sense, just open your mouth and make a pop sound in the microphone and students will cheer you up and go like "hoooooow".You will become the talk of the school the next day and this coupled with competence meant you've won the election in advance.Interesting, right?

But have you ever wondered how such jaw breaking words as aequeosalinocalcalinocereceoaluminosocupreovitriolic come about?How about the meaning associated with such words and how they are pronounced?

Indeed, it's said that the longest word in English language is made up of 189,819 letters and the average man will have to spend not less than three hours to pronounce it. It's the largest known protein.(Maybe we will deal with this word alone someday in an article of fifty-seven pages).Huh!

As a matter of fact, a word's definition and how length should be measured and compared determine longest words in English language.We can understand length of words from the orthography(a part of language study that deals with letters and spelling),and number of written letters, but also in rare cases from the phonology and the number of phonemes(see https:/en.m.wikipedia.org & Merriam Webstar dictionary)....

Apart from Latin and Greek roots,thus,the language's root,new words in English language can be formed by agglutinative constructions, coinage,or derived from technical terms and names(scientific names)....Mind you, such words may or may not be found in the dictionary.

Agglutinative constructions:this involves the extension of existing words to create other words or to serve a new purpose.This is done by simply adding a suffix or prefix.This process can be used as a strategy to create long words.

Examples of such constructions are:incomprehensibility,great-great-grandmother,antidisestablishmentarianism(a 28 letters word which means an opposition to withdraw government support of a particular religion or church), semihemidemisemihemidemisemihemidemisemiquaver, anti-bacterial....

Coinage:Words can be string together to create arbitrarily long words.This is by threading(bringing together) the ingredients of the word.For instance, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a 45 letters word coined to be the longest word in major dictionaries(specifically, the longest word in Oxford English Dictionary).In the world of medicine, it's the same as Silicosis. The 45 letters word simply refers to a lung disease that one is likely to get from inhaling fine silica particles (volcano) or quartz dust.Other examples include:Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (34 letters word made popular from the movie Mary Poppins.You only say this word when you don't know what to say or you don't have anything to say).

The longest word in Merriam Webstar dictionary is electroencephalographically(a 27 letters word...electroencephalograph is an apparatus for detecting and recording brain waves)...

Longest non technical word(not likely to appear in general text) is floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters word which consist of Latin words. It means nothing or the act of estimating a thing as valueless or worthless).

Technical terms:
A number of Scientific names are generated as long words.For example,Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic(a 52 letters word that describes the Spa water at Bath)...It's attributed to Dr . Edward Strother (1675-1737), and composed of the following elements:

Aequeo-equal (Latin:aequo), Salino-containing salt (Latin:salinus), Calcalino-calcium (Latin:calx), Ceraceo-waxy (Latin:cera), Aluminoso-alumino (Latin),Cupreo:derived from copper, Vitriolic:looks like vitriol.

Others forms of long words:
Longest English word made up of only vowels is EUOUAE, a 6 letters word .Notice that all the letters are vowels and are most consecutive vowels . It's a musical term from ancient times and holds two Guinness World Record.

Longest monosyllabic word is STRENGTHS,a 9 letters word made up of 8 consonants, and only one vowel.It holds a Guinness World Record.

Longest word with alternating consonants and vowels is HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS,a 27 letters word which is same as "honorableness."Another close example is UNIMAGINATIVELY, has more vowels. Alternate between vowels and consonants.

The longest Word without a vowel but only consonants is TSKTSK(6 letters),which one use to indicate his or her disapproval of something.

Isograms:This are words that do not repeat letters.UNCOPYRIGHTABLE and SUBDERMATOGLYPHIC are the longest examples.

Linguistic pluralism in English(using words of natural origin than borrowing from Latin and Greek) will be my next focus.

I must be very quick to end by saying that it pays very much to speak and write as simple English language as possible . Being complicated doesn't really pay.God bless!

The writer is a freelance journalist, a blogger, teacher and a student at the university of Ghana Business School pursuing Bsc Administration with a major in Public Administration. Read more of his works on his personal blog:ananpansah-ab.blogspot.com

By:ANANPANSAH, B ABRAHAM (AB)
(The village Writer)
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