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In Spanish, SUPEREXTRAORDINARISIMO is the longest word according to Guinness 1995. However, the legitimacy of this word is open to dispute. Nidia Cobiella points out that there are numerous similarly-formed questionable words, such as superextraordinariamente, superespectacularisimo, otorrinolaringologistico, endocrinologicamente, apesadumbradisimamente, descontaminadamente, requeterequeteacostumbrado, sobreabundantisimamente, superimaginariamente, superexcelentisimamente, superpsicoanalisticamente, and desconsideradisimamente. SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICOESPIALIDOSO (from Mary Poppins) has also been suggested. The legitimate words OTORRINOLARINGOLOGIA and OTORRINOLARINGOLOGO could also lead to superotorrinolaringologo and superotorrinolaringologisimo. Other suggestions for the longest word in Spanish are ESTERNOCLEIDOMASTOIDEO (22 letters, a neck muscle), ANTICONSTITUCIONALMENTE (23 letters, unconstitutionally), and ELECTROENCEFALOGRAFISTA (23 letters, electroencephalograph technician).
In French, ANTICONSTITUTIONNELLEMENT is the longest official word [Jacques Raymond Kilchoër].

In Lithuanian, NEBEPASIKISKIAKOPUSTELIAUJANCIUOSIUOSE (38 letters) is possibly the longest word that can be formed according to legal grammatical rules (so it can't be regarded as completely coined). It means "in those, of masculine gender, who aren't gathering wood sorrel by themselves anymore." The meaning is obscure but possible, e.g. in a fairy tale about hares: "A terrible hunger arose in the [long word] hares" [Juozas Rimas].

Vilius Puidokas provides a slightly longer version of this Lithuanian word: NEBEPRISIKISKIAKOPUSTELIAUJANCIUOSIUOSE (39 letters), meaning "in those, of masculine gender, who aren't gathering enough wood sorrel by themselves anymore." He says the fairy tale use could be the same.

Andrius Stasauskas provides an even longer version of the word: NEBEPRISIKISKIAKOPUSTLAPIAUJANCIUOSIUOSE (40 letters), meaning "in those, of masculine gender, who aren't gathering enough wood sorrel's leaves by themselves anymore." He reports that the word will appear in his upcoming book about the lives of ants, Ridas. Kankorezis (in English, Rid. The Cone).

In Matsigenka (also spelled Machiguenga), IRAPUSATINKAATSEMPOKITASANOIGAVETAPAAKEMPAROROKARITYO is the longest word. It means: They will probably really go head over heels into the water when they arrive but not stay that way [Pierre Abbat].

In Portuguese, INCONSTITUCIONALISSIMAMENTE (27 letters) is the longest word. It means "very unconstitutionally" [Carlos Andre Branco].

In Croatian, PRIJESTOLONASLIJEDNIKOVICA (26 letters) is a word meaning "the wife of a heir to the throne" [Vjekoslav Babic].

In Russian, the longest word is RYENTGYENOELYEKTROKARDIOGRAFICHYESKOGO (33 Cyrillic letters, 38 Roman), "of the X-ray electrocardiographic," according to 1996 Guinness. According to Ilya Morozov, the longest Russian common noun is VODOGRYAZETORPHOPARAPHINOLECHENIE (29 Cyrillic, 33 Roman). It means "a medical treatment with use of water, ooze, peat and paraffin." Another long Russian word is ZAGIPNOTIZIROVAVSHEMUSYA (22 letters), meaning "to him who has hypnotized himself" [Pierre Abbat]. Regarding this word, Ilya Morozov writes, "This is a verbal adverb, not a noun. It is very important: in the overwhelming majority of Russian word-puzzles only nouns can be used. Therefore, most Russian computer programs for word searching contain only noun lists."

In Turkish, ÇEKOSLOVAKYALILASTIRAMADIKLARIMIZDANMISINIZ (43 letters, 18 syllables) is usually cited as the longest word. It translates as "are you one of the people whom we couldn't Czechoslovakianize (i.e. make into a Czechoslovakian)"? However, the last seven letters are usually printed as a separate word [Edward Sawyer].

The following discussion on long Turkish words is from Fatih Aygün: In Turkish Çekoslavakyalilastiramadiklarimizdan miymissiniz (47) is traditonaly cited as the longest Turkish word, but the last 11 letters are written separately. It is counted as a single word because the separate part is a suffix. The word means "Were you amongst the ones that we couldn't make a Czechoslovakia citizen?" If we want a word without spaces, we have Çekoslavakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmissiniz (44). That means "apparently you were amongst the ones that we couldn't make a Czechoslovakia citizen." But there are longer place names than Çekoslavakya. Afyonkarahisar, a province of Turkey, is the first I came up with. Afyonkarahisarlilastiramadiklarimizdanmissiniz (46) has a similar meaning, just replace Czechoslovakia with Afyonkarahisar. In fact, the conjugation template can be a bit more complicated. Afyonkarahisarlilastiramayabileceklerimizdenmissiniz (52) means "apparently you may be amongst the ones that we will not be able to make a Afyonkarahisar citizen." The longest unconjugated word in the TDK dictionary (TDK = Turkish Language Foundation, official regulator of the Turkish language) is elektroansefalografi (20), which means "electroencephalography." So we can invent a longer conjugated word: elektroansefalografililestiremeyebileceklerimizdenmissiniz (5 cool , which means "apparently you may be amongst the ones that we will not be able to make have an electroencephalography." I systematically searched the online version of the TDK dictionary and conjugation suffixes. So I think that a longer word cannot be invented unless a longer word stem is invented.

NAJNEOBHOSPODAROVAVATELNEJSIEHO (31 letters) is the longest Slovak word, according to Miroslav Sedivy, who reports it means "of the less cultivable" (about a field).

According to Jacek Drobnik, the longest real word in Polish, which is neither an intentionally mounted oddity nor a surname nor a chemical name, is NAJCHARAKTERYSTYCZNIEJSZEGO, the genitive form of the adjective "the most characterisitc," meaning "of the most characteristic" (27 letters).

However, according to Michal Marcin Wozniak the longest word in Polish is konstantynopolitańczykówianeczka (32 characters). It is the diminutive of the word "konstantynoplitańczykówianka." The second one means: "an unmarried daughter of a man living in Constantinople."

According to Martin Vancura, the longest word in Czech officially is nejneobhospodaøovávatelnìj¹ími (without diacritics nejneobhospodarovavatelnejsimi), which is instrumental case, plural form of "the less cultivable" (quite similar to the Slovak version above). A longer word, however is nejnezdevìtadevadesáteronásobitelnìj¹ími (without diacritics nejnezdevetadevadesateronasobitelnejsimi), the instrumental case of plural of "the less multipliable by ninety nine." He writes, "Unfortunately, I must confess, the word does not belong among the most used part of Czech vocabulary but it is absolutely grammaticaly correct and still there are contextual situations where it can be appropriately employed."

According to 1996 Guinness, the longest Dutch word is KINDERCARNAVALSOPTOCHTVOORBEREIDINGSWERKZAAMHEDEN (49 letters, preparation activities for a children's carnival procession," or literally, "for children Carnival procession preparation activities" wink . ZANDZEEPSODEMINERAALWATERSTEENSTRALEN (37 letters, to "take a hike" or to "p*** off" wink appeared in a book by Herman Brusselmans, a (Flemish) Belgian writer, who writes in Dutch. There is also WAPENSTILSTANDSONDERHANDELINGEN (31 letters, "cease-fire negotions" or "truce negotiations" wink [Richard Eisenberger, John Slegers, René Davids].

Philip Bennett writes, "The longest (non-hyphenated) Gaelic word I know of is BEARRADAIREACHD (15 letters), which means 'clipping, shaving or pruning.' The longest (hyphenated) Gaelic word I know of is CRUIMH-SHIONNACHAIN (18 letters), which is 'a glowworm.'"

According to a reader of this page, the longest word in Malay (called "Bahasa Melayu" in Malay) may be DIKETIDAKNYAHCASDIVERSIFIKASIELEKTROSTATIKKAN (45 letters), which means "has been undiversified of uncharged electrostatic electricity." There are also MENYETIDAKNYAHCASDIVERSIFIKASIELEKTROSTATIKKAN (46 letters), meaning "to undiversify uncharged electrostatic electricity" and PENYETIDAKNYAHCASDIVERSIFIKASIELEKTROSTATIKKAN (46 letters) meaning, "the process of undiversifiying uncharged electrostatic electricity." However, the latter two are no longer the widely used spellings.

In Japanese, the longest word is CHI-N-CHI-KU-RI-N (12 letters) a very short person (slang), according to 1996 Guinness. However, Ben Rudiak-Gould writes, "I can't imagine why they'd think this. Right off the top of my head, BUTSURIGAKUSHA (physicist) is both longer and more commonly used. A look in the dictionary turned up OSHITSUKEGAMASHIKATTA (was forceful), which has the added virtue of being a native yamato word (as opposed to a Chinese loanword). If you're allowed to use implausibly complex verb conjugations, you can get things like UKETAMAWARASERARETAKATTA ("I wish I had been allowed to hear of it" wink . These weren't the result of any kind of systematic search. A native speaker could probably come up with better examples."

The 1996 Guinness also has: "Patent applications sometimes harbor long compound words. An extreme example is one of 13 kana (Japanese syllabary), which transliterates to the 40-letter KYUKITSUROHEKIMENFUCHAKUNENRYOSEKISANRYO meaning 'the accumulated amount of fuel condensed on the wall face of the air intake passage.'"

According to Takasugi Shinji, the longest native Japanese word is ryûgûnootohimenomotoyuinokirihazushi. Ben Rudiak-Gould writes, "It's not always clear what constitutes a word in Japanese, but I'm not convinced this qualifies. It's the name of a plant (eelgrass), and like other plant names it's often written in katakana, which makes it look like a single word. But it's really a multi-word phrase, ryuuguu no otohime no motoyui no kirihazushi, which means something like 'clippings of the hair-cord of the princess of the Dragon Palace' (said princess being an ocean-dwelling character from Japanese folklore)." Takasugi Shinji disagrees with this. He writes, "A reliable online Japanese dictionary says it is the longest plant name. A species name is a compound word, not a phrase consisting of several words, because it cannot be divided or reordered. Grammatically speaking, "forget-me-not" is a single word, so is "baby's breath." English speakers usually don't treat them as single words just because of hyphenation and spacing."

In Icelandic, the longest word is HÆSTARÉTTARMÁLAFLUTNINGSMAÐUR (29 letters, "Supreme Court barrister" wink .

In Hungarian, the longest word is megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért (44 letters), according to the 1996 Guinness. A translation is "for your constant mentioning of the fact that [a particular thing] is unprofanable."

Ádám Szegi writes, "Since the publication of the above word, a new invention has been made. The basic word was modified and extended to another direction, leading to: legeslegmegszentségteleníttethetetlenebbeiteknek which means: "to those of you who can the very least be made profanized." This may be the current record in Hungarian with its 48 letters. This is not used in everyday Hungarian, of course. But there is another snake of word: változásbejelentésikérelem-benyújtási [kötelezettség] -- 37 letters which means: [obligation] "of filing an application to register a change" [of address etc.] This may occur in formal documents (though people usually don't dare to write down such a long word in one and will probably separate it with some spaces "to look better" wink . In theory, according to the orthography, this is a perfectly correct form, though they advise to possibly paraphrase expressions like that."

In Mohawk, the longest word is TKANUHSTASRIHSANUHWE'TSRAAKSAHSRAKARATATTSRAYERI' (50 letters), "the praising of the evil of the liking of the finding of the house is right," according to 1996 Guinness.

According to Johan Sydseter, the longest Norwegian word is Minoritetsbærerdiffusjonskoeffisientsmålingsapparatur (53 letters), "device for measuring the distance between atoms in crystalised substances." These Norwegian words have 27 letters: ARBEIDSTAKERORGANISASJONENE, KORREKTURLESINGSPROGRAMMENE, STATSTJENESTEMANNSKARTELLET, UNDERVISNINGSORGANISASJONER, and FOLKESUVERENITETSPRINSIPPET.



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In German, the longest word is DONAUDAMPFSCHIFFAHRTSELEKTRIZITAETENHAUPTBETRIEBSWERKBAUUNTERBEAMTENGESELLSCHAFT (80 letters), "the club for subordinate officials of the head office management of the Danube steamboat electrical services (name of a pre-war club in Vienna)," according to 1996 Guinness. According to Barbara Kratzin, in German the word would just have 79 letters, since ae would be written as Ä. A reader of this page writes, "There has been a 'Rechtschreibreform' in Germany recently which has changed the spelling of many words. I believe that there should be another "f" in Donaudampfschiffahrt.... It is now Donaudampfschifffahrt...." This word is an agglutinative.
However, Paul Cooper writes, "The longest German word, quoted as Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitaetenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengessellschaft, has the statement appended to it, that it can be spelled Donaudampfschifffahrtselektrizitaetenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengessellschaft is wrong. The reform of the German language is only accepted by one Dictionary (Duden) and the spelling rules are now ignored by the government and all major newspapers, therefore the fff is likely to be incorrect."

He also writes, "There is another long word in German, although its real status as a word cannot be correctly confirmed. The word is "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaensfrauenverbandsvorsitzendenaufwandsentschaedigungsrahmenordnungsrichtlinienen" 119 and loosely means "The Danube Steam Navigation Company's Captain's wives federation for basic remuneration expenditure guidelines." It can also be spelled under the new spelling rules as "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaensfrauenverbandsvorsitzendenaufwandsentschaedigungsrahmenordnungsrichtlinienen" with 120 letters.

Hwever Peter Wyss writes, "The Danube Steam Navigation Company's Captain's wives federation for basic remuneration expenditure guidelines can also be spelled under the new spelling rules as "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaensfrauenverbandsvorsitzendenaufwandsentschaedigungsrahmenordnungsrichtlinienen" with 120 letters. The last two letters should not be there. It should say 'Linien' not 'Linienen.'"

Dave Pawson writes:

Actually, Ausserordentlichhochgeschwindigkeitelectronenentwickelndesschwerarbeitsbeigollitron should be Ausserordentlichhochgeschwindigkeitselectronenentwickelndesschwerarbeitsbeigollitron, as the feminine ending -keit takes an -s when in combination form. So Time blew it again, I guess?
I would also point to the game of "Nominalisieren" or "noun-making" which I used to play with my German friends. Players take turns adding a suffix to an ever-growing word, repeating the entire word each time before adding their own part. Players may not modify the previous word except as required by the rules of the German language, ie adding the -s to -keit or -ung endings before proceeding with the next added word. Each play must result in a complete word, for instance:

Papier (paper)
Papierkorb (wastepaper basket)
Papierkorbgesellschaft (waste paper basket company)
Papierkorbgesellchaftspräsident (waste paper basket company president)
Papierkorbgesellchaftspräsidentenbüro (waste paper basket company president's office)
Papierkorbgesellschaftspräsidentenbüroteppich (waste paper basket company president's office carpet)

As you can see, I am already at 45 letters, and could still go on with the waste paper basket company president's office carpet cleaners' uniform dry-cleaning corporation's hanger or some such foolishness. Of course, words such as these would be extremely rarely used and would not be found in any dictionary, but according to the rules of German, would be perfectly valid!

According to Guinness, in German the longest dictionary word in everday usage is RECHTSSCHUTZVERSICHERUNGSGESELLSCHAFTEN (39 letters), "insurance companies which provide legal protection."

A reader of this page writes, "There is no real 'longest word' in German, as speakers may make up grammatically correct words when needed." Steven Van Gemert writes, "I agree with this, and can give a somewhat specific example. When numbers are written in German, the individual words are concatenated together. Thus, the longest word would be the written form of an extremely large number. Considering that numbers can be infinitely large, then the largest word should theoretically have no limit. However, I am unsure as to whether there are even terms coined for such large numbers. For instance, in English you have "million", "billion", "trillion" and "quadrillion" (interpreted differently in America, yes, but all the same). If you were to think of a term to describe a number higher than that (even up to a "Googol" for instance), then I could ask you to name the term that is a thousand times the number you named. Eventually I think we would run out of terms to name the numbers with. Therefore, the longest word in German could theoretically be found with a little research since there would be a finite number of defined terms to describe the numbers. Unless of course you simply use "tausendtausendtausend" to indicate a thousand times a thousand times a thousand and so on. In which case I should like to submit that the longest German word would start with "siebentausendtausendtausendtausend...". smile "

In July 2006 another reader of this page writes:


Unfortunately, I consider some of the claims about the German language as dubious, at best.
Firstly, anything starting with "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft" tells every German, here we have another go at "long word." No one would take them seriously, and I've seen quite a few longer ones than the ones you've mentioned.

About the spellig reform in German, thus "Donaudampschiffahrt" vs "Donaudampfschifffahrt": I have no idea how your correspondent Paul Cooper came to this conclusion:

"The reform of the German language is only accepted by one Dictionary (Duden) and the spelling rules are now ignored by the government and all major newspapers, therefore the fff is likely to be incorrect."

The reformed spelling is "accepted" by all major dictionaries, and it is taught for quite a few years now. The old style of writing is admittedly still used by the major weekly news magazine (Der Spiegel), the major tabloid (Bild) and the major "regular newspaper" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). This of course is legal, since spelling has no legal standing as a law. Still, the government as well as schools use the reformed spelling. So "fff" should be considered correct, even if you consider the old spelling the standard.

Even more so, since the rule change responsible for this is one of only a very few that are actually not opposed by those opposing the new spelling, but which was acclaimed by all sides to be a very sensible change (before: when you had three same consonants in a row due to glueing words together, it would be written with three consonants if the next letter was a consonant as well "Balletttheater", but only with two, when the next letter was a vowel "Schiffahrt". Now it's 3 letters regardless.) and is used this way even by those who oppose the reform in general.

Then again, "Donaudampfschiffahrts(...)gesellschaft" (please note: only 1 "s" in "gesellschaft" wink would be a proper name of a company, to which normal spelling rules would not apply at all. They could decide to change their name in such a situation, or to let it stay the same. If it weren't that all these "Gesellschaften" are entirely fictional.

About German numbers: Those are not formed as claimed on your page. Up to a million, this is correct: 724537 would be "Siebenhundertvierundzwanzigtausendfünfhundertsiebenunddreißig" but millions and higher values are not glued on, but rather separated: 157063724537 would become "Einhundertsiebenundfünfzig Milliarden dreiundsechzig Millionen Siebenhundertvierundzwanzigtausendfünfhundertsiebenunddreißig". And putting "tausend" in any place you like wouldn't work, eeither.

And yes, Germans can form words as long as they like to. So we had the Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz as an actually suggested law (see German wikipedia). But we do not like that too much, the title of the law was changed, though it makes perfect sense to any German (after some digging through the word, it's not like we do this every day to this extent): "Law concerning how to assign the supervisional duties for labelling of beef products".



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In Swedish, the longest word is NORDÖSTERSJÖKUSTARTILLERIFLYGSPANINGSSIMULATORANLÄGG-
NINGSMATERIELUNDERHÅLLSUPPFÖLJNINGSSYSTEMDISKUSSIONS-
INLÄGGSFÖRBEREDELSEARBETEN (130 letters), "preparatory work on the contribution to the discussion on the maintaining system of support of the material of the aviation survey simulator device within the north-east part of the coast artillery of the Baltic," according to 1996 Guinness. Fredrik Viklund found LÅGTRYCKSKVICKSILVERÅNGURLADDNINGSANORDNING in a Swedish patent application from approximately 1910-1930. It referred to what is now called a "lysrör" in common language. It means "Low pressure quicksilver vapour discharge apparatus."
According to Ville Koskivaara, the longest word in Finnish is epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkään, which he says means roughly "even with its quality of not being possible to be made irrational." Tuomas Rannikko suggests the alternate translation "not even when taking into account his/her/its way/ability/tendency of not disorganizing." He also writes, "I have also seen alternative spelling of epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkään, but I cannot discern which is correct (Or they both might just as well be correct.) While AFAIK it is the longest non-compound (a single word, not a word made by concatenating many words together) word in Finnish language it's not the longest word. Compound words can be longer, and of course medical terms (which I hardly consider words in any given language, except for medical language itself) are long and also used throughout the world, regardless of the language they're wrapped into. The longest compound Finnish word I can think of right now is kaksitariffikolmivaihevaihtovirtakilowattituntimittari which is something along the lines of "dual-tariff tri-stage AC kWh meter" Then, if one adds a similar ending to the word as with the epäjärjestelmällistyttää, it would become kaksitariffikolmivaihevaihtovirtakilowattituntimittarillaansakaan which is 'not even with his/her/its dual-tariff ...'"

Ville Koskivaara writes, "The spelling epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkään suggested by Tuomas Rannikko is incorrect. One can say a) epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellään or b) epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsä, but one can never say c) epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsä. The options a) and b) mean the same thing, option c) does not exist in Finnish."

Charles Turner believes the longest word in Nahuatl (Aztec) is MIHUIITTILMOYOCCUITLANTONPICIXOCHITL (37 letters).

According to Fotis Papanicolaou, in Greek, two long words in common use are SKOULIKOFAGOMIRMIGOTRIPA (an ant eating worm's lair) and LEMONOPORTOKALOMANTARINOFLOUDA (citrus fruit skin). However, Tsompanidis Vassilis writes, "These two are made-up words that do not actually mean anything. They are only used as examples of long words. For example the second one 'means' "skin of a lemon-orange-sanguine.'"

In 1950, Time magazine printed the following suggested correction in its letters column:

Shouldn't Ausserordentlichhochgeschwindigkeitelectronenentwickelndesschwerabeitsbeigollitron [Time, March 13] read Ausserordentlichhochgeschwindigkeitelectronenentwickelndesschwerarbeitsbeigollitron?
(Rev.) T.M. Hesburgh
C.S.C.
Notre Dame, Ind.

Time's terse reply:
Yes, as Time's Los Angeles and Philadelphia (but not Chicago) printers had it.—Ed.
According to Charles Turner, who supplied this information, Rev. Hesburgh has pointed out the need for an 'r' in the 18th position from the end of this German "word."
SMILES is supposed to be the longest word in the dictionary because “there's a mile between the two S's.”

A reader of this page writes, “On that basis, BELEAGUERED is longer as it has a league—which is 3 miles—between the start and end!”

According to Red Skelton, the longest word is the word that follows the announcement, “And now a word from our sponsor”!