Thursday, January 20, 2011

LANGUAGE TRIVIA ... EXTRA LONG WORDS

 

Interdenominationalism - 22 letters

Honorificabilitudinitatibus – 27 letters - The word means ‘with honour-ableness’ and appears in Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost.

Antidisestablishmentarianism – 28 letters – Gladstone is reports to have used this in his vocabulary. It means a ‘doctrine of opposition to disestablishment (withdrawal of state patronage, support or exclusive recognition from a church).

Floccipaucinihilipilification – 29 letters – The longest word listed in the Oxford Dictionary means ‘the action of estimating as worthless’. First recorded in 1741, Sir Walter Scott later found a use for it.

Praetertranssubstantiationallyistically – 37 letters – this was used in the novel ‘Untimely Ripped’ by Mark McShane published in 1962. It means the act of transubstantiation referring specifically to the transformation of bread and wine into the blood and body of Christ during Mass in the Roman Catholic Church.

Hepaticocholangiocholecystenterostimies – 39 letters – if you have had surgery to create new communications between your gall bladder and hepatic duct and between your gall bladder and your intestines, this is the medical term for what you have had done!

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis -45 letters – this is a condition found among miners in particular. It is a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust.

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