Let’s continue our little foray into long words, shall we? We covered some extremely long words last time, but they were weird. Now we come to some that are more recognizable, but still rack up the letters.
Antidisestablishmentarianism (twenty-eight letters) was originally used to described opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England. Which is a lot of negatives.
If they were against DISestablishing, doesn’t that make them in favor of establishing? Couldn’t they just have called themselves establishmentarians?
No, because then we wouldn’t have this gloriously long word.
The longest word you probably know, but I’m not sure if it should count or not, is of course,
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (thirty-four letters).
Mary Poppins said it’s the word to use “when you have nothing to say.”
Surprisingly, it does appear in some (but not all) dictionaries.
And finally, sesquipedalianism.
Which I’m so pleased to say, is a long word that describes the tendency to use long words.
