I have heard of proteins, etc. being longer than the word, "antidisestablishmentarianism," but other than technical words, is this the longest word in the English language?
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[This message was edited by Karrow on 04-14-03 at 07:57 PM.] *********************************************************** 03-23-03, 01:33 PM Texan-In-Exile According to this site, it is the longest word:
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[This message was edited by Karrow on 04-14-03 at 08:01 PM.]
03-23-03, 02:12 PM jusork My dad has always said that pneumonaultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (I couldn't find it on either of two internet dictionaries but it's in my big manual dictionary) is the longest word in the english language.
03-23-03, 03:10 PM Jenny Roberts Apparently this is the longest word in the English language- 1,909 letters. Tryptophan synthetase A protein, an enzyme consisting of 267 amino acids. It has actually appeared in print in various publications!
Ash, Russell. The Top 10 of Everything 2000 (New York: DK Publishing, 2000), p. 112.
03-23-03, 05:25 PM MkStfnz
quote:Originally posted by jusork: My dad has always said that pneumonaultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (I couldn't find it on either of two internet dictionaries but it's in my big manual dictionary) is the longest word in the english language.
Thanks, everybody. Jusork, what does pneumonaultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis mean?
03-23-03, 05:54 PM jusork According to my dictionary: "An obscure term ostensibly referring to a lung disease caused by silica dust."
03-23-03, 06:41 PM MkStfnz Thanks, jusork. I think that I just found my longest non-technical/non-scientific word. (And I like the sentence. Big Grin)
03-23-03, 07:11 PM FredPuli The Oxford English Dictionary does indeed have another regularly formed English word of length, even in the Shorter edition : floccinaucinihilipilification . 'The action or habit of estimating as worthless' the word is formed from a series of Latin words all meaning ' at little value' with '-fication' I make it 29 letters long.It dates from the mid-C18. Antidisestablishmentarianism is a word actually used in the C19 in debates in Parliament concerning the Church of England, a creation of Henry VIII,'the Established Church'.There have been longer words in literature (uniquely, I imagine !): 'aqueosalinocalcalinacetace aluminosocupriovitriolic' to describe spa waters (near Bristol, if I recall aright) and 'osseocarnisanguineoviscerocartilaginonervomedullary 'to describe the human body anatomically are two that I can just remember from childhood study of The Guinness Book of Records !
03-23-03, 08:50 PM methos The original question excluded proteins, but since it's been brought up...
The name given above for Tryptophan Synthase A might be the longest word to have appeared in print, but the longest protein listed in genbank has 34,350 amino acids, compared to the 267 in Tryptophan Synthase A. I don't know exactly how many letters that translates to but I would estimate somewhere around a quarter of a million letters.
now that would be a mouthful Wink
03-24-03, 11:53 AM Monsterquizzer The original question seemed to want to exclude scientific and technical words, but most answers offered are precisely such. Fred's "floccinauci..." is just as much a joke-word as the "...expialodocious" one from 'Mary Poppins' is, with only age to recommend it despite having fewer letters. I just know Maiku will appear and say that there is no reason why there shouldn't exist, perhaps, 'antidisestablishmentarianistically' to describe how believers in the basic idea might behave...however, the original word ending in 'ism' really is the longest non-scientific/non-technical word that any of us is ever likely actually to see in print.
03-24-03, 01:13 PM maiku
quote:Originally posted by Monsterquizzer: ...I... know Maiku will appear and say that there is no reason why there shouldn't exist, perhaps, 'antidisestablishmentarianistically' to describe how believers in the basic idea might behave...however, the original word ending in 'ism' really _is_ the longest non-scientific/non-technical word that any of us is ever likely actually to see in print.
I was planning to give this whole thread a pass, MQ, since I find the whole subject of the "longest word" to be tiresome, and besides, almost always based on misapprehensions of what counts as a word and what doesn't.
Thanks for remembering our little discussion some while ago about English morphology in general and about possibly even longer derivatives of antidisestablish... existing. It was fun. You no doubt remember that I held the principled position that English morphology was a creative process, and that words derived from recognized words by regular processes have every legitimate claim to being words, the fact that they may not have been previously attested in print notwithstanding.
Note, MQ, that the "pneumonoultra..." thing was cited above by another correspondent (jusork)with an extra "ly" derivational ending, fully supporting my point, which was that if x is a word, then so is x suffixed with ly (given that it conforms to morphological rules, of course.) Note that the even longer ending -istically might have been used instead.
My point earlier, and what still needs to be stressed for those who depend only upon dictionaries, or worse, upon popular websites which record the biggest this and that, is that language is a highly flexible, creative, and ever-changing thing. From the point of view of the linguistic analyst who grasps this important fact, questions about the "longest" word in English are not only trivial, they are misguided. Wink
[This message was edited by maiku on 03-24-03 at 01:23 PM.]
03-24-03, 10:01 PM Leppi The longest word in the english language is smiles. It has a mile between each S.
03-25-03, 05:53 AM Monsterquizzer Dear Maiku, of course I take your point that language is fluid and that individual words are virtually infinitely extendable. However, I would hope that you would take the point in the last couple of lines of my earlier answer, too...namely, that the longest "normal", if not exactly "everyday", word - as opposed to words in medical, scientific, technical or joking categories - any of us is likely to come across in print is, indeed, 'antidisestablishmentarianism'. No amount of imaginative linguistic shenanigans is going to alter that fact. (I agree, by the way, that the whole debate is pointless, so I'll be leaving it right there, but what the hey!)
03-25-03, 07:16 PM puppyblues Jenny, how DO you pronounce that?! And what the heck does it mean? Did you type all that out Eek Big Grin
03-25-03, 09:32 PM methos puppy - proteins are basically just chains where each link is an amino acid (these chains twist into complex shapes, but that's another story). The long name that jenny listed is just a list of the 267 amino acids that make up that particular protein, in the order they appear. Wherever "leucyl" appears in the list, leucine appears in the protien, wherever "glutaminyl" appears in the name, glutamine appears in the protein, and so forth for the other 18 possible (common) amino acids.
cute answer, yafa Smile
03-25-03, 10:30 PM puppyblues Huh? Confused
(just a little easier terms, methos?) Smile
03-25-03, 11:24 PM methos puppy - say you wanted to name this:
Smile Frown Wink Frown Wink Smile Frown Frown
you could call it: smilefrownwinkfrownwinksmilefrownfrown
A protein is basically the same thing, except the faces are replaced with molecules called amino acids (of which there are 20 different kinds; each face would correspond to a different kind of amino acid), and it would be hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of faces long.
The long name jenny gave is like the "smilefrownwinkfrownwinksmilefrownfrown" ... it tells you exactly what order the amino acids come in. In the long protein name, each piece of it like methionyl, leucyl, alanyl, etc. refers to a different amino acid within the protein, just like frown, smile, and wink refer to the differnt faces.
Since some proteins have tens of thousands of amino acids, no one really uses these long names when refering to proteins. Instead, we give them names like "Tryptophan Synthase A" that describe what they do, and just keep records of what the orders of the amino acids are.
capiche?
[This message was edited by methos5000 on 03-25-03 at 11:33 PM.]
03-25-03, 11:50 PM puppyblues Well, I'm getting it, slowly.....but I'll keep reading it over and over till it all sinks in.
Thanks, methos Smile
03-27-03, 03:01 PM maiku
quote:Originally posted by Monsterquizzer: ... I would hope that you would take the point in the last couple of lines of my earlier answer, too...namely, that the longest "normal", if not exactly "everyday", word... any of us is likely to come across in print is, indeed, 'antidisestablishmentarianism'...I agree, by the way, that the whole debate is pointless...
Of course I do take your point, MQ, and I agree with you fully, especially when it comes to the last clause of your post cited above. It seems to me, moreover, that Methos' posts in this thread, as informative about protein nomenclature as they may be, constitute a pretty convincing reductio ad absurdum proof that we are both right about the extendability of words and at the same time about the essential pointlessness of arguments about the longest word.
[This message was edited by maiku on 03-27-03 at 03:09 PM.]
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