i have read that the longest word in any of the major english language dictionaries is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. a word of medical origin, it is defined in wikipedia as a a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs – simply, it is a condition called as silicosis.
” l – a – o – d – i – c – e – a – n . . laodicean “.
from 13-year-old kansas girl kavya shivashankar, spelling the winning word which means lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics in scripps national spelling bee in washington d.c.
baking, blazing, blistering, boiling, broiling, burning, calescent, decalescent, febrile, fevered, feverish, feverous, fiery, flaming, heated, humid, igneous, incandescent, like an oven, on fire, ovenlike, parching, piping, recalescent, red, roasting, scalding, scorching, searing, sizzling, smoking, steaming, stuffy, sultry, summery, sweltering, sweltry, thermogenic, torrid, tropic, tropical, very warm, warm . .
it is actually 55 degrees centigrade here in our location . . words aren’t enough to describe the heat in here!
merriam-webster just added the word “pescatarian” in their collegiate dictionary:
| pescatarian |
according to one of merriam-webster’s editor, a word wins only its place in the dictionary after passing their “carefully edited prose” test. he added that “if a word appears frequently in print without parentheses, without appearing in italics, without any kind of explanation, then that’s a word that editors and writers assume their readers know and understand, that word should be in the dictionary”.
got this from the web:
this is very interesting.
even though the letters are mixed in the following text, most people have no trouble reading it!
aoccdrnig to rscheearch at cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. the rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
if you can’t read this, you can find original text here:
according to research at cambridge university, it doesn´t matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. the rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without a problem. this is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole.
