by Ester Brierley
Language is an extremely important part of our life, as it gives us a unique opportunity to communicate, share our thoughts and go on with our daily life effectively. It is constantly evolving and versatile that it is impossible to learn it thoroughly. It amazes us with the abundance of different words and how many different meanings and ways of usage they may have. Let’s have a look at the world’s longest words the existence of which you didn’t even suspect.
1. It is a shame, but in our article, we will not be able to write the longest word in the world. It is not because it is a secret, but because it so long that you will need over 3 hours to read it. It has the astonishing number of letters - 189,819. It names a chemical called “titin” (or “connection’”), and just to give you a glimpse, here is a shortened version of the name of the largest known protein (just the beginning and the end of the word): Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl...isoleucine.
This word is considered to be the longest in English dictionary. It names a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine silica particles from the volcano. The shortened version of the disease name is silicosis.
It is formally considered to be the longest French word and can be translated into English as “unconstitutionally”.
“Very strongly against the constitution” – this is the meaning of the longest Spanish word.
It is a long word indeed and was created due to an amazing capacity of Swedish grammar to create extra long words. Its meaning is “The manager of the depot for the supply of uniforms to the personnel of the track cleaners' union of the tramway company”.
This word is considered to be the longest Turkish word meaning "As if you would be from those we can not easily/quickly make a maker of unsuccessful ones".
This is a long chemical term which can be found in the Ukrainian language and might considered to be the longest word used.
Slovak grammar also allows long words to be easily created, and this particular word means “Through the least crystallized ones”.
This word is the longest Romanian and it is the name of disease.
This long Polish common word, but amazing fact is that it can be made even longer, but then it will not be used in the spoken language.
This word is being used in Norway and has a meaning of “The human rights organizations”.
Iceland is notorious for its long words and this word means "A keychain ring for the outdoor key of road workers shed in a moor called Vaðlaheiði".
Language is very flexible and changes all the time. New words appear and some become obsolete. Moreover, the grammar of some languages gives an opportunity for the appearance of words with unlimited length, so to define the longest word might never be possible.
We have made a list of words which are considered to be the longest (or among the longest), either in general use or in the narrow technical spheres. Obviously, any of those unique super-long words have shortened version for the convenience of usage. Most of the time these words are used solely in scientific studies; however, if to look for the longest word from a humorous point of view, the word smiles may be considered one of the longest words, as it has a mile between its first and last letters. Study language, it is fun!
More long words
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_words
Ester Brierley is a graduate student (Computer Science), junior QA Engineer in software outsourcing company, an enthusiastic freelance writer for Darwin essay. She adores researching cutting-edge trends and sharing them in her writing pieces. You can follow her on Twitter.
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