When do words become too long to be words?
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, at 45 letters in size, and meaning “a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano”, is the longest “coined” word in the English language to also be included in the Oxford dictionary.
There are two other words that are longer, and while one of those – at 183 letters – is also a coined word, it does not appear in any dictionary. Another “word”, that is 189,819 letters long is the subject of some contention as to whether it is in fact a word at all… which doesn’t surprise at the least.
