I came across this video and i was wondering if this is an actual word in the English Language. The guy said the word in between breaks because it was so long
Wikipedia has this to say about the word The longest technical word in English is the scientific name for the protein titin, at 189,819 letters. Titin is the largest known polypeptide in the human body, composed of 34,350 amino acids. Though lexicographers regard generic names of chemical compounds as verbal formulae rather than English words, for its sheer length it is often included in longest-word lists.
I know I did degree level chemistry but I'm pretty sure the systemic naming is explained at high school level. The name is so long because it needs to convey the stucture of the molecule. There are conventions as to what needs to be named, in what order, and why. It's also not hard to google it...
the longest non technical word is Floccinaucinihilipilification, being one letter longer than the commonly-cited antidisestablishmentarianism.
Ths thread is certainly supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! However, no competition to our German Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaensmuetzenband (danube river steam ship company captain's cap tally) and that's not even the longest word we have, though it's a bit above average
The problem with including words like this in "longest word" lists is that there really isn't a longest one. There is no upper limit to the length of the names you can devise in this manner. How long is the chemical name of my DNA?
captrek's desoxyribonucleic acid - 32 digits/29 letters. Some biochemists leave the s away and write "deoxiribonucleic". In that case it'd be 31 digits/28 letters.
I think Finnish word lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas (assistant mechanic and non-commissioned officer trainee for airplane jet engines) beats that. That was an actual rank/position in Finnish Air Force once. Edit: that whole thing should be together, I don't know why it puts space between s and double e. I guess the word broke the forum.
LOL awesome!! =) I bet if the Finnish would ever participate in a war, nobody could ever break their codes. (I had the unwanted gap problem, too. Tried 6 times to edit the post and then surrendered. It's American software and not used to European words ) And welcome to the board!! Be sure to visit the Lounge as soon as you have enough posts to be allowed there (until then it is invisible on the forum index). In my opinion the Lounges are the best places on the board and they are a lot of fun. They are also a good place to make friends The only disadvantage is that there are different lounges for the different ranks. This way friends get separated if they have different posting speeds. I'm a slow poster myself and looking forward to seeing you in the Fleet Captains' lounge in a few months)
Already happened. We had a slight misunderstanding with Russians in 1940s and during that time they couldn't break all of our codes. After the war (being the winning party and all that) they demanded us to hand over our ciphering machines. I guess they were expecting something like Enigma-machine, since they couldn't believe that a simple wooden box with slips of paper inside had defeated their best decryptors. And the best part is that the simple wooden box (Matolaatikko, worm box was the nickname for the device) really was what was used for encrypting messages.
I think that there's one proper word that's longer than pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, but I consider the latter to hold the title as the other was just someone being a twit. (Edit: To be fair, antidisestablishmentarianism is probably the longest perfectly respectable English word. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis might have a meaning and little or no redundancy, but it's coinage does seem to have had an element of goofballery.)
@ Retu: LOL! That proves that the simplest things are almost always the most ingenious ones Maybe they should ask Finnish experts to help decode the 70 year old encrypted British mail-dove message they discovered recently. It seems that the modern British secret service and Army are unable to decipher their predecessors' message, heehee.
I work in a technical field and I'm glad the jargon is pretty tame. We use big scary words like concrete and sewage. Actually the thing I notice is how many terms have a double entendre to them. It's what you get when you have a field that is 90% dudes.