LONG WORD
LONG WORD. A polysyllabic WORD, especially of LATIN or GREEK origin, and often uncommon and difficult to spell or pronounce, such as diuretic or phantasmagorical. People often ask what the longest word in English might be, but the answer depends on what can be accepted as a word. Some chemical combinations have names of over 1,000 letters, but these are usually amalgams of combining elements rather than words as such. The longest word in the 1st edition of the OED is floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters), ‘the action or habit of estimating something as worthless’, which the Supplement of 1982 topped with the lung disease pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters). See DERIVATION, HARD WORD.
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Word , WORD
WORD A fundamental term in both the general and technical discussion of language. The following selection of primary definitions of word is draw… ANAGRAM , anagram •am, Amsterdam, Assam, Bram, cam, cham, cheongsam, clam, cram, dam, damn, drachm, dram, exam, femme, flam, gam, glam, gram, ham, jam, jamb, l… Four-letter Word , FOUR-LETTER WORD. A word of four letters considered vulgar or obscene and referring to sex or excrement, such as (with varying degrees of offensive f… Loanword , LOANWORD, also loan-word, loan word. A WORD taken into one language from another: in English, garage from French, leitmotif from German. Such words a… Abbreviation , ABBREVIATION The shortening of words and phrases (kilogram to kg, Imperial Chemical Industries to ICI) and a result of such shortening (MA for Master… Hyphen , HYPHEN The PUNCTUATION mark (-), which has two main functions in present-day English: as a link hyphen (or hard hyphen in printing terminology), join…
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LONG WORD