The 45 -letter word PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS (also spelled PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOKONIOSIS) is a lung disease caused by breathing in particles of siliceous volcanic dust. It is the longest word in any English dictionary. However, it was coined by Everett Smith, the President of The National Puzzlers’ League, in 1935 purely for the purpose of inventing a new “longest word”. The Oxford English Dictionary described the word as factitious. Nevertheless it also appears in the Webster’s, Random House, and Chambers dictionaries. Another one is the 34-letter word SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS, a song title from the Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins. It is in the Oxford English Dictionary. It goes as follows: “But then one day I learned a word That saved me achin’ nose. The biggest word you ever ‘eard, And this is ‘ow it goes: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!”

And among the longest words, comes FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION, which means an estimation of something as worthless. This is the longest word in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Interestingly the most common letter in English,the letter e, does not appear in this word at all, whilst i occurs a total of nine times. The word dates back to 1741. The 1992 Guinness Book of World Records calls floccinaucinihilipilification the longest real word in the Oxford English Dictionary, and refers to pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis as the longest made-up one.

Ashveen KUTOWAROO [email protected]