• Question: what is the BIGGEST ever word?

    Asked by Popey to Pete on 14 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Pete Gwynne

      Pete Gwynne answered on 14 Nov 2017:


      a lot of complicated chemicals can have stupidly long names. the longest is a protein called titin (found in muscles), which would take three hours to say out loud. if you ever have trouble sleeping, there is a video of a man reading out the name here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ-fgWXPOBY
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      the longest words in the dictionary are mostly scientific because scientists like to build new words out of old latin and greek ones. pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism is 30 letters long. the longest word that isn’t something scientific is floccinaucinihilipilification, which describes when someone thinks that everything is rubbish or pointless.

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