LOOONNNGGG words

It may be just out of boredom and with nothing else to do, i used to memorize long words out from encyclopedias and articles that i'd run into. It brings a nice feeling that you know some of the long words and that you are also able to pronounce them well.

From Frank and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, I got these:
DDT - dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane
CFC - chlorofluorocarbon

From Internet searches about fear of Friday the 13th, i found two terms for the phobia:
paraskavedekatriaphobia
friggatriskaidekaphobia

We often would have contests between elementary classmates on who could speak this the fastest:
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

But, with the medical terms that i got acquainted with, of course there's a whole lot being added to my list. Stumbling upon the question on what is the longest word in English, I remembered reading an old Guinness Book of World Records book at home (too old that the front pages were cut off and i don't know what edition it is) about the topic. And since entries about such does not change in time, unless there are new word coinages, information from my good old book are still relevant. Searches in the Wiki also provided useful answers. I just think I can share them with you.

The longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary is flocci­nauci­nihili­pili­fication (with a variation of p for n, i.e., floccipaucini...), with 29 letters, meaning "the action of estimating as worthless," first used in 1741, and later by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832).

Webster's Third International Dictionary lists among its 450,000 entries pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters), the name of a miner's lung disease.

The longest word in an English classic is the nonce word Honorificabilitudinitatibus (27 letters), occurring in Act V, scene I of Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), but used with the ending "-tatatibus," making 29 letters, in The Water Poet by John Taylor (1580-1653). In this category may also be placed the 52-letter word used by Dr. Edward Strother (1675-1737) to describe the spa waters at Bristol - aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic. In his novel Headlong Hall, Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) described the human physique as "osseocarnisanguineoviscericartilaginonervomedullary" - 51 letters.

The longest regularly formed English word is praetertranssubstantiationalistically (37 letters), used by Mark McShane in his novel Untimely Ripped, published in 1963. The medical term hepaticocholangiocholecystenterostomies (39 letters) refers to the surgical creations of new communications between gall bladders and hepatic ducts and between intestines and gall bladders. The longest in common use is disproportionableness (21 letters).

Sounds fun if you get to be familiar with these words, huh?
More exciting words with certain characteristics of notable lengths found here.

-honey-