Hey! We have come again with another interesting fact! Guess what? Have you ever thought of the fact that just like the longest tunnel, longest rail line, longest dam, there is the longest word in English?
Now, you might be pondering over it! Your jaws will drop when you hear it!
So, what does the longest word in English mean?
The longest word in an English dictionary is never seen not just because it would take 15 full pages to write but because of the way protein names are generated which is usually known by its common name. The identity of the longest word in English depends upon the definition of the word and how length should be compared. Words are derived naturally from the language’s roots by construction. It is difficult to compare due to various reasons like technical terms are arbitrarily long, place names can be considered as words and use of certain suffixes and prefixes can increase the length of the word.
The length of a word may be understood in different ways like the length is based on different spelling rules and the counting of the letters. What we use less in counting the length of the words is phonology or sounds.
So, the longest word in major English language dictionaries is
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, which refers to a lung disease and is generally known as silicosis. The world knows it as silicosis which is a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine ash and sand dust. It is a type of pneumoconiosis. It is a 45- letter word. It is only mentioned in the dictionaries but never used for communication.
There are many such words which are not found in dictionaries and if you want to know more then, the longest non-technical word in major dictionaries is floccinaucinihilipilification which is of 29 letters. It consists of a series of Latin words which means “the act of estimating something as worthless”.
Ross Eckler, was an American statistician, and author, found that most of the longest English words are not likely to occur in general text, in which the author did not specifically intend to use an unusually long word with the longest english word pronunciation.
So now your question is what is the longest word in English?
Coming to the point, the longest English word has letter count of 189,819. Do you find yourself speechless? It is the longest word in English which you need to say for three and a half hours. It is the technical name of the protein titin which is also known as connection. Titin is a giant protein greater than 1 µm in length and functions as a molecular spring which is responsible for the passive elasticity of muscle. The name starts with “methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl…” and ends with “…isoleucine”. According to international guidelines, a protein’s technical title lists every single amino acid found inside it. Even the smallest proteins contain no fewer than 20 amino acids, having their pretty long names; titin, however, is the human body’s largest protein. The total amino acid count is
34,350. You have to spell out each of those amino acid names in a row and thus, you get a really long word. This is the reason why scientists prefer to call it titin. So, you do not find the full name of titin in dictionaries.
Longest English Word Pronunciation
The IUPAC nomenclature for organic chemical compounds is open-ended, giving rise to the 189,819-letter chemical mane which is involved in striated muscle formation. DNA molecules can be much bigger than protein molecules and therefore potentially be referred to with much longer chemical names. If you do not find the full name of titin in dictionaries then what is the longest word in the dictionary? It depends on which dictionary you consult.
There is always a debate which states whether a DNA string can be considered as the longest English word that is made up of thousands of letters. But they are regarded as chemical names rather than genuine words. So, if the question is “the longest English word” your opinion is as valid as anyone’s longest english word in the world.
Conclusion
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