What Is The Longest Word In The World
Longest Word in The World
Do you have an interest in learning new words and facts about languages? Or do you find it amusing to learn the world records made by the languages? Can you spend three hours straight pronouncing only one word? It may sound tiring, but linguistic experts find it a fun thing to do!
Well, you may wonder why we are asking these questions and the thing is that this article is about figuring out the longest word in the world. Whether you are visiting this page by chance or you were curious about this topic, it is now time for you to be ready and discover the longest word. As a native speaker of a particular language, you may be more curious to learn about the biggest word in your language. And therefore, you should not worry because we are providing details about different tongues.
If someone wants to have a word with you, make sure it’s not the longest one. To learn about this word and the interesting facts, you need to read this blog till the end! So, let’s start!
What is the longest word in the world?
There are many researchers that state different words to be the longest. Well, it is not possible to write out the longest word in the world because it will require around fifty-seven pages. It is the chemical name for the titin protein in humans. The name of proteins is mash-up the names of the chemicals making them. And since Titin is the largest protein ever discovered, its name had to be equally as large. The full name of this word has 189,819 letters.
You may want to hear it, right? It is not mentioned here but you can search on YouTube. A man helpfully sounds it out in a YouTube video, but before watching this video, you should get your popcorns ready because it will take you around three hours to watch it completely. It is just slightly shorter than a Hollywood movie. The major dictionary omits the name of this protein and many other long words because dictionaries have space constraints, and an average person does not need to know the technical names of the chemicals.
History of the Word – Titin
In history, many people argue whether or not Titin is a real word, but one should know that proteins are the chemicals that perform their part in making them. According to scientists, there are more than 2 million proteins in the human body, which consist of amino acids. Among those many, Titin is the largest protein, which contains more than 26 thousand amino acids. The chemical name of this word was first kept in the English dictionary, but it was later removed from the dictionary when the name caused trouble.
Titin protein was discovered by Reiji Natori in 1954. Subsequently, in 1977, Koscak Maruyama and coworkers isolated an elastic protein from muscle fiber, which they called connectin. Two years later, Kuan Wang and coworkers identified a doublet band on electrophoresis gel corresponding to a high molecular weight elastic protein, which they named titin.
It is a giant protein responsible for the passive elasticity of the muscle. Although it has its name derived from the giant Greek deity Titan, titin was annoyed at the fact that it sounded cute, so it asked The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry for a name worthy of its size. There are not many people who can pronounce this word successfully and therefore who can pronounce it are very famous.
Another Word in the English Language
This topic is getting more and more interesting now. This next word wasn’t originally part of the major dictionaries. It was originally an invention by the president of the National Puzzlers’ League as a synonym for the disease i.e. silicosis with the sole purpose of becoming a candidate for the longest word in English.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the second-longest word consisting of 45 letters. This word refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica dust or quartz dust, specifically from a volcano; medically, it is the same as silicosis. Oxford Dictionaries says it is a medical term that qualifies as the longest word in English..
Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism
Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is a 30-letter long word. Oxford Dictionaries defines it as “a genetic disorder in which the skeletal abnormalities of pseudohypoparathyroidism are present without the biochemical abnormalities common to hypoparathyroidism and pseudohypoparathyroidism” – in normal human language that roughly translates to “thyroid disorder”.
This is the longest non-coin word to appear in a major dictionary. This word refers to the mild form of the disorder that stimulates the symptoms of the disorder but isn’t familiar with the abnormal and normal levels of calcium and phosphorus in the blood.
Floccinaucinihilipilification
A twenty-nine letter word is the estimation of something as valueless. Ironically, floccinaucinihilipilification is a pretty valueless word itself; it’s rarely in use except as an example of a long word. It should be crowned as the longest non-coin and non-technical word, but some regard it as coined.
However, Oxford Dictionaries define it as “the action or habit of estimating something as worthless”. The poor freak originates from Latin flocci, nauci, nihili, pili (words meaning ‘at little value’) + -fication. This word consists of five Latin roots. Oftentimes, people speak it humorously.
Antidisestablishmentarianism
This is another twenty-eight letter word and people mark it as the longest non-coined and non-technical word. The Oxford Dictionaries define this word as the opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England. On the other hand, Merriam Webster Dictionary has a very strong opinion towards this word.
It claims that this word does not deserve its place in the dictionary. No one can put antidisestablishmentarianism in the dictionary because there’s hardly any record of its use as a real word. It’s only cited as an example of a long word which is not the same thing”.
The first virus
The word tobacco mosaic is the name of the first virus ever discovered in 1892. It infects tobacco plants. It was also the first mosaic virus protein to have its shape and structure studied rigorously. Some of this work was done by none other than Rosalind Franklin of DNA double-helix fame. This word describes a protein worth 1,185 letters long name. It is officially the longest word that’s ever appeared in print for non-record setting purposes. Thanks to the advances in technology since the 1960s, scientists can nowadays describe vastly longer proteins than the tobacco mosaic virus.
There’s another tryptophan protein that runs 1913 letters and is 60 percent longer than the tobacco protein. Tryptophan protein is the relative of the chemical that people think makes them sleepy when they eat turkey. Moreover, this word is not in common usage but it still has importance. Some consider that the word which is not in common usage is often meaningless but that’s not the case here. Know about the translation letter to better understand its importance.
These words belong to the agglutinative language because they are super long and weird in some way. As an agglutinative language, Turkish carries the potential for huge words. Further, like many other Germanic languages, Dutch also has a lot of compound words in it. But as we know, lots of people do not count a technical term as the longest because they are just chemical abstracts. Hence, they have sustained usage.
