Five Extremely Long English Words Causing a Civil War Among Linguists

5 Honorificabilitudinitatibus

Shakespeare made his comic figure Costard deliver this mouthful in Act V of Love’s Labour’s Lost. It means “the state of being able to achieve honors,” and is exactly one syllable longer than just saying that. It’s what’s known as a hapax legomenon, or a phrase that’s only ever used once in a given work. It’s made up, by some guy, for one very specific purpose.

And sure, technically all words are made up by some guy. If we bar “honorificabilitudinitatibus” from the dictionary, do we also have to erase his other bangers, like “bedazzled” and “swagger”? Of course not! The argument is that we can keep this one out of the dictionary because it looks dumb, is hard to say and no one has or will ever use it naturally in a sentence. If those qualities are fair game, there are other behemoths that have this one beat by a mile.

But fear not, Shakespeare dorks: Even if all the longer words on this list are all considered valid, this one is still the longest word in the English language to alternate consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel for the whole excruciating spelling.

4 Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Silicosis is an occupational hazard for folks who spend a lot of time around tiny particles. It’s also known as Grinder’s Asthma, Potter’s Rot or, if you’re America’s biggest nerd in 1935, “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” Everett E. Smith, then the president of the National Puzzler’s League, made the controversial call that the 45-letter word was fair game in the organization’s various word-based contests. It made national headlines, and was subsequently included in the Oxford Dictionary and Merriam-Webster. 

There are two distinct arguments against this one taking the mantle. First, it was made up solely to count as the longest word. Second, word nerds have recruited medical dweebs to declare that it’s scientifically inaccurate. Did you notice that little “volcanoconi” part toward the end of the word? That boils down to “volcano dust,” and there’s no evidence that silicosis has been induced by volcanic ash. “So there!” screamed a 1930s linguist who lost a game of Scrabble one time, from the grave.

3 Antidisestablishmentarianism

You may have heard this one from a fourth-grade classmate who owned a book of fun facts, or was particularly well-read in 19th century British politics. In the mid-1800s, it referred to the political opinion that the Anglican Church should remain the official state church of England, Ireland and Wales (although Scotland was allowed to do its own thing).

No American should ever have to know that much about the Brits, especially from the High Stink period of that moist country. But it gained steam stateside after a contestant correctly spelled it on an episode of The $64,000 Question in the mid-1950s. It’s often considered the longest word that wasn’t made up for the sake of making a long word, and isn’t long-winded technical jargon. But seeing as it’s come in handy exactly one time in the last 150 years, lots of people think it shouldn’t really count.

2 Lopado­temacho­selacho­galeo­kranio­leipsano­drim­hypo­trimmato­silphio­karabo­melito­katakechy­meno­kichl­epi­kossypho­phatto­perister­alektryon­opte­kephallio­kigklo­peleio­lagoio­siraio­baphe­tragano­pterygon

This word refers to an extremely fancy ancient Greek dish, or really, a whole dinner: “limpets and saltfish and sharksteak and dogfish and mullets and oddfish with savory pickle sauce and thrushes with blackbirds and various pigeons and roosters and pan-roasted wagtails and larks and nice chunks of hare marinated in mulled wine and all of it drizzled with honey and silphium and vinegar, oil and spices galore.” 

That’s a big boy! The Greek word is 171 letters, and the 183-word Latin-ification technically counts as English, as this is the proper way to refer to the meal in our language. So what’s the linguistic gripe? It was technically “made up” by “some guy” for a “silly little play.” It comes from Greek playwright Aristophanes’ 391 BC play Assemblywoman, a poignant comedy about women taking control of Athens and banning the wealthy. While Guinness recognizes it as the longest word to appear in literature, it’s technically a “nonce word,” or “occasionalism”: a word made up for one very specific occasion, and never actually used in conversation.

1 Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl… (Skip a Few) …isoleucine

Titin is the largest known protein in the human body, and as such, was given the largest known technical name in the English language. It’s about 50 times slimmer than a human hair — you can’t exactly see it with the naked eye, but the fact that it’s even close illustrates how enormous this protein is. It’s made up of a gargantuan 244 protein domains, which are all crunched together in a small space, like a spring. In fact, its whole purpose in the human body is to allow our muscles to be elastic and springy, capable of stretching out undamaged and then compacting into a small space. 

The word itself is kind of a metaphor for its function. “Titin” is a very crisp, tidy word, but it represents an absurdly unwieldy scientific name. When you go dork mode and put all 244 of those protein domains together, you get a single word that’s 189,819 letters long, and takes about three and a half hours to say out loud. So what could linguists, who purportedly LOVE a good word, possibly have against this, the king of all appellations? It doesn’t appear in the dictionary. 

That’s it! Webster never took the initiative to add five additional pounds to their book, so some people think it shouldn’t count as the longest word in the language.