eng
competition

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Words with certain characteristics of notable length (Wikipedia.)

created Sep 8th 2014, 09:00 by Nehemiah Thomas


11


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537 words
27 completed
00:00
Schmaltzed and strengthed (10 letters) appear to be the longest monosyllabic words recorded in The Oxford English Dictionary, while scraunched and scroonched appear to be the longest monosyllabic words recorded in Webster's Third New International Dictionary; but squirrelled (11 letters) is the longest if pronounced as one syllable only (as permitted in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary at squirrel, and in Longman Pronunciation Dictionary). Schtroumpfed (12 letters) was coined by Umberto Eco, while broughammed (11 letters) was coined by William Harmon after broughamed (10 letters) was coined by George Bernard Shaw.
Strengths is the longest word in the English language containing only one vowel.
Euouae, a medieval musical term, is the longest English word consisting only of vowels, and the word with the most consecutive vowels. However, the "word" itself is simply a mnemonic consisting of the vowels to be sung in the phrase "seculorum Amen" at the end of the lesser doxology. (Although u was often used interchangeably with v, and the variant "Evovae" is occasionally used, the v in these cases would still be a vowel.)
The longest words with no repeated letters are dermatoglyphics, misconjugatedly and uncopyrightables.[24]
The longest word whose letters are in alphabetical order is the eight-letter Aegilops, a grass genus. However, this is arguably both Latin and a proper noun. There are several six-letter English words with their letters in alphabetical order, including abhors, almost, begins, biopsy, chimps and chintz.[25]
The longest words recorded in OED with each vowel only once, and in order, are abstemiously, affectiously, and tragediously (OED). Fracedinously and gravedinously (constructed from adjectives in OED) have thirteen letters; Gadspreciously, constructed from Gadsprecious (in OED), has fourteen letters. Facetiously is among the few other words directly attested in OED with single occurrences of all five vowels and the semivowel y.
The longest single palindromic word in English is rotavator, another name for a rotary tiller for breaking and aerating soil.
Typed words
The longest words typable with only the left hand using conventional hand placement on a QWERTY keyboard are tesseradecades, aftercataracts,[26] and the more common but sometimes hyphenated sweaterdresses.[25] Using the right hand alone, the longest word that can be typed is johnny-jump-up, or, excluding hyphens, monimolimnion[27] and phyllophyllin.
The longest English word typable using only the top row of letters has 11 letters: rupturewort. Similar words with 10 letters include: pepperwort, perpetuity, proprietor, requietory, repertoire, tripertite, pourriture and typewriter. The word teetertotter (used in North American English) is longer at 12 letters, although it is usually spelled with a hyphen.
The longest using only the middle row is shakalshas (10 letters). Nine-letter words include flagfalls, galahads and alfalfas.
Since the bottom row contains no vowels, no standard words can be formed. Exceptions might include Zzz, seen in some dictionaries to denote sleep, or m', the clitic form of my.[28]
The longest words typable by alternating left and right hands are antiskepticism and leucocytozoans respectively.[25]
On a Dvorak keyboard, the longest "left-handed" words are epopoeia, jipijapa, peekapoo, and quiaquia.[29] Other such long words are papaya, Kikuyu, opaque, and upkeep.[30] Kikuyu is typed entirely with the index finger, and so the longest one-fingered word on the Dvorak keyboard. There are no vowels on the right-hand side, and so the longest "right-handed" word is crwth.

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