A man has been recorded spending more than three hours to pronounce what is supposedly the longest word in the English language.
‘Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl…isoleucine’ is the chemical name of ‘titin’ (also known as ‘connectin’) – the largest known protein. It has 189,819 letters.
However, in the past it has been disputed whether or not it is a real word – proteins are named after the chemicals involved in making them.
The longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ at 45 letters long.
‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’, made famous by Mary Poppins, is 34 letters long.
The word is 189,819 letters long.
The word is 189,819 letters long actually the name of a giant protein called Titin. Proteins are usually named by mashing-up the names of the chemicals making them. And since Titin is the largest protein ever discovered, its name had to be equally as large.
You’ll notice there’s an ellipsis here, and that’s because this word, in total, is 189,819 letters long, and it’s the chemical name for the largest known protein, titin. Technical words can grow to enormous lengths, but they also kind of suck all the fun out of this question.
