File under “-osis, Pncumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconi”: “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is not the longest word in the English language, but is the longest word my poor typesetters have to deal with at this moment.
OK, Pneum-etc. is a word. And, yup, it’s a long one. But it’s a word that was made up purely to be a long word. The Oxford English Dictionary says that it’s likely the creation of one Everett M. Smith, who served as president of the National Puzzlers’ League in 1935. It even has a “meaning”: black-lung disease, for us laypeople.
Yes, every word is a made-up word, but if we were to accept this as a real word and then crown it the longest word in the language, we might as well allow me to type at random for several hundred pages without spaces and declare two things: (1) that what I’d just typed is now the world’s longest word, and (2) that suddenly I’ve met my page-count commitment for the length of this book, saving me a whole lot of work.
Still, even if we concede that pneumonoultra-and-ensuing-train-wreck is a real word, it would not the longest word in English.
You can find examples of some plenty long words that have appeared in texts, including honorificabilitudinitatibus, from the same writer who gave us such shorter treasures as majestic, multitudinous, and (ironically) frugal: William Shakespeare. But honor- yadayada is not the longest word in the language. Nor are the sumptuously syllablized technical terms nor the longlonglong Welsh place names the longest.
You see, the longest word in the English language is sesquipedalian, even though it has but fourteen letters and six syllables.
It means “the use of big words,” but it doesn’t seem to be the biggest of the big—until you analyze its origin. Latin, of course: sesqui-, meaning one and a half, and -pedalian, “of the foot,” from Horace’s phrase sesquipedalia verba. Sesquipedalian is the longest word in the English language, measuring a full foot and a half.
Bill Brohaugh
770
With exquisite appropriateness, sesquipedalian grew a toe and a bunion from its earlier, shorter form: sesquipedal. But if the shoe doesn’t fit. . .