The Longest Word in the Dictionary
An Examination of the Grandest Definition in the English Language
While it may surprise many, the definition for the word "set" actually takes up more space than any other word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The longest official word in the English language in number of letters (according to the Oxford English Dictionary – a source very few would question on matters such as this), is one which describes a certain disease of the lungs which is caused by breathing in certain harmful particles. This word, which very few of us will ever find ourselves needing to use in any normal conversation, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
On the contrary, many may have learned at one point or another (perhaps via that most respected of all sources for such information, The Guinness Book of World Records) that the longest official word in the English language is antidisestablishmentarianism, which refers (ostensibly) to a British movement to prohibit the severing of ties between the church and state.
Anyone with a decent knowledge of the English language, however, knows that any such record is cused with a fundament linguistic flaw. The fact is that there is no longest word in the English language. We have prefixes and we have suffixes and we can always use them to make a word longer. Consider antidisestablishmentarianistically. While it may not appear in any existing dictionary, that doesn’t mean it’s not an actual word, does it?
Indeed, while long words may be fun to learn and to mess around with in our heads, it is surely folly to consider ourselves to have discovered once and for all that which is the greatest among words. Perhaps it would be best to attempt to look at this in an altogether different way.
The Longest Definition
One interesting viewpoint is to consider the word with the longest definition. It may not be the longest word in the dictionary (in fact, it is very, very, far from it), and it may not be the most interesting on the surface, but hidden beneath its relatively simplistic exterior is a word which seemingly defies all definition, which seems to have absolutely no end to its possible meanings.
So what is it? Is it love? Is it god? Surely these words are some of the most difficult to describe. But it is neither of these.
The word, in fact, is “set.” S-E-T. As in, “I set that rock over there,” or, “I have a set of cards.”
It’s a common word, and one which on the surface does not seem too peculiar. It is surely not one of those words that one generally stops to ponder its many meanings. Very few of us realize that this word, in that king of all lexicons, The Oxford English Dictionary, requires a full 10,000 words to fully define. That is the equivalent of roughly twenty pages of standard type (to put this further in perspective, a standard novel contains about 100,000 words – only ten times longer than this single definition).
Beyond the usual definitions (to set something down; to have a set of something)The words “set” can be used in mathematics, referring to a grouping of numbers (set theory), a certain division in a tennis match, a list of songs played by a band or DJ, an achievement in a game of darts, the Egyptian god of deserts, a part of a gang, a card game, an album by The Thompson Twins, an important aspect of music theory and, of course, an important formation in square dancing, amongst many other things.
Really, the more one thinks about it, the more possible meanings this word can have. One could potentially sum up love, peace, god, war, right, wrong, or any other words that seem like they would be hard to define in just a few simple sentence.
So clearly it might be advisable to forget about trying to judge words by their length, for there is simply no end to such things (though at least this fact provides endless fodder for authors and linguists to play with in their constant attempts at originality). The true measure of a word is in its definition, for in this aspect lies the entire history of a word’s meaning – the past, present, and perhaps even hints at the future.
Let the dictionary be your guide.
References:
The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 1991.
