Longest Words
The longest word in any given language depends on the word formation rules of each specific language, and on the types of words allowed for consideration. Agglutinative languages allow for the creation of long words via compounding. Even non-agglutinative languages may allow word formation of theoretically limitless length in certain contexts. Words consisting of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of characters have been coined with the goal of being ranked among the world's longest words; technical scientific terms can run to hundreds of thousands of characters in length. Place names may not be accepted on lists of longest words despite their length. Longest word candidates may be judged by their acceptance in major dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary or in record-keeping publications like the Guinness World Records, and by the frequency of their use in ordinary language.
Read more about Longest Words: Afrikaans, Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Māori, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese, Welsh
Famous quotes containing the words longest and/or words:
“The ensuing year will be the longest of my life, and the last of such hateful labours. The next we will sow our cabbages together.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)