The longest English word and other curious words
The longest English word: The question of determining the longest English word inevitably boils down to defining what is acceptable as a word, since prefixes/suffixes can be adjoined to words to make longer words and because medical/chemical terms can get arbitrarily long. Further, most contenders for the honor of being the longest word are likely to be very rare in actual usage - so rare, in fact that they could be considered nonce words. The most common candidates for the crown, in my opinion, are
antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters),
floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters) and
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis (45 letters).
The longest English word: The question of determining the longest English word inevitably boils down to defining what is acceptable as a word, since prefixes/suffixes can be adjoined to words to make longer words and because medical/chemical terms can get arbitrarily long. Further, most contenders for the honor of being the longest word are likely to be very rare in actual usage - so rare, in fact that they could be considered nonce words. The most common candidates for the crown, in my opinion, are
antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters),
floccinaucinihilipilification (29 letters) and
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis (45 letters).

