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:
“A bill... is the most extraordinary locomotive engine that the genius of man ever produced. It would keep on running during the longest lifetime, without ever once stopping of its own accord.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
““The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)