The largest word in english dictionary

Link Root word Meanings Origin Examples and Definitions a/n not, without Greek abyss - without bottom; achromatic - without color; anhydrous - without water a on Latin afire - on fire; ashore - on the shore; aside - on the side a, ab/s from, away, off Latin abduct - carry away by force; abnormal - away from normal, not normal; absent - away, not present; aversion - the act of turning away from; abbreviate: to shorten. a/c/d to, toward, near Latin accelerate - to increase the speed of; accessible - easily entered, approached, or obtained; admittance - allowing into; acro top, height, tip, beginning Greek acrobat - a "high walker"; acronym - a word formed from the first (capital) letters of a word; acrophobia - fear of height act do Latin activity - something that a person does; react - to do something in response; interaction - communication between two or more things aer/o air Greek aerate - to let air reach something; aerial - relating to the air; aerospace - the air space agr/i/o farming Latin Greek agriculture - management of the land, agribusiness - making money by utilizing land; agrarian - relating to the management of land alg/o pain Latin neuralgia - pain caused by a nerve; analgesic - a drug that makes one pain free; nostalgia - aching for the familiar ambi, amphi both, on both sides, around Latin ambidextrous - able to use both hands equally; ambiguous - having more than one meaning; ambivalence - conflicting or opposite feelings toward a person or thing ambul wa...

So. What's the longest word in the dictionary? If you said antidisestablishmentarianism, you're wrong. The longest word in the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary is currently acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, which refers to "a tough rigid plastic used especially for automobile parts and building materials," also helpfully known as ABS. We can't put antidisestablishmentarianism in the dictionary because there's hardly any record of its use as a real word. It's only cited as an example of a long word—which is not the same thing. In fact, antidisestablishmentarianism isn't entered in any of our dictionaries. Yes, we know: we enter acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and don't enter antidisestablishmentarianism? What kind of lexicographers are we? We are the kind that like to enter words with meanings. There are three criteria all words must meet in order to be entered into the dictionary: widespread usage, sustained usage, and meaningful usage—that is, evidence that the word is used to refer to something. Where antidisestablishmentarianism gets disqualified first is the "meaningful usage" criterion. Go ahead: what does "antidisestablishmentarianism" mean? It's an example of a antidisestablishmentarianism is used as an example of a long word, it doesn't have a meaning at all. But can't we construct a meaning for it? Sure. Based on its component parts, antidisestablishmentarianism would mean something like, "opposition to depriving a legally established state church of its status." Our...

First of all, I assume that with “largest dictionary” you mean the dictionary with the largest number of entries (lemmas), not the one that fills the largest number of pages. In this form, the question probably cannot be answered, given the fact that different languages have different systems of lemmatisation. To begin with, Wiktionary includes proper nouns, while traditional dictionaries exclude proper nouns. The Dutch WNT covers texts down to 1921 and has 430000 entries. The second edition of the OED (1989) has 291000 entries, but the current on-line version claims to have 600000 words. Just to problematize the question I would like to mention Arabic, a language considered to have a very large vocabulary. Arabic dictionaries are arranged according to roots. The numerous verbal derivatives of any given root are all counted as a single lemma, while the singular nouns derived from a given root are treated as separate lemmas. The largest dictionary of Classical Arabic, the Tāj al-ʻarūs, is said to contain 120000 “words”. This looks a lot less than the WNT and the OED. However, the Tāj was compiled in the 18th century, the other two in the 20th; the vocabularies of Dutch and English have obviously increased enormously in the last two centuries. Moreover, the Tāj contains in principle only the words found in the Qur’an (not many) and in the early Arabic poets, so let’s say words attested in texts from before about 700 AD. I doubt whether there are many other languages that clo...

• achondroplasia - 14 • breadcrumb - 10 • cineangiocardiographic - 22 • deinstitutionalized - 19 • ethylenediaminetetraacetate - 27 • flameproof - 10 • governmentalizing - 17 • handsbreadth - 12 • interstimuli - 12 • (There is no word beginning and ending with J) • kinnikinnick - 12 • lepidopterological - 18 • mesembryanthemum - 16 • nondiscrimination - 17 • obbligato - 9 • postmastership - 14 • qepiq • remanufacturer - 14 • straightforwardnesses - 21 • transformationalist - 19 • unau - 4 • vav - 3 • wheelbarrow - 11 • xerox - 5 • youthfully - 10 • zuz - 3 (found on Many of these words may not feature in the English dictionary. Some are medical or technical words. Here's the output of a quick-and-dirty script that I wrote (in descending order): • supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - 34 • ethylenediaminetetraacetate - 27 • transubstantiationalist - 23 • cineangiocardiographic - 22 • labioglossopharyngeal - 21 • abetalipoproteinemia - 20 • nonindustrialization - 20 • dynamometamorphosed - 19 • plenipotentiaryship - 19 • governmentalising - 17 • metapostscutellum - 17 • rhomborectangular - 17 • hygrothermograph - 16 • improvvisatori - 14 • overlubricatio - 14 • frictionproof - 13 • killickinnick - 13 • windlestraw - 11 • xylanthrax - 10 • bumblebomb - 10 • uturuncu - 8 • qepiq - 5 • zizz - 4 • vav - 3 Here's the original output (in alphabetical order): • abetalipoproteinemia - 20 • bumblebomb - 10 • cineangiocardiographic - 22 • dynamometamorphosed - 19 • ethylenediaminetetra...