Which is the longest word in an English dictionary?
Floccinaucinihilipilification is the longest NONTECHNICAL word. it means “the act or habit of estimating or describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floccinaucinihilipilification I work it into conversation with my boss just to annoy him.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.ogg (help·info), also spelled -koniosis) is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “a factitious word alleged to mean ‘a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust found in volcanoes’ but occurring chiefly as an instance of a very long word.”[1] It was coined to serve as the longest English word. It is one of several dust inhalation lung diseases called pneumoconeoses.
We do have genuine (if rather obviously deliberate) examples in our files of antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters) and floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters), which are listed in some of our larger dictionaries. Other words (mainly technical ones) recorded in the complete Oxford English Dictionary include: otorhinolaryngological (22 letters), immunoelectrophoretically (25 letters), psychophysicotherapeutics (25 letters), thyroparathyroidectomized (25 letters), pneumoencephalographically (26 letters), radioimmunoelectrophoresis (26 letters), psychoneuroendocrinological (27 letters) hepaticocholangiogastrostomy (28 letters), spectrophotofluorometrically (28 letters), pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters).
