You may have heard people claim the longest word in the English language is “antidisestablishmentarianism,” a dusty old term that's defined as the “opposition to the withdrawal of state support or recognition from an established church.” With 28 letters and 12 syllables, it is certainly a mouthful, but it isn’t necessarily the lengthiest. Bury your head deep into the murky corners of the complete English lexicon and you’ll find that much longer words exist. 

The word that takes three hours to say

Some people contend that the longest word in English has 189,819 letters, starting with “methionyl…” and ends with “...isoleucine.” As tempting as it is, we won’t be typing the word out in the full as it will take hours upon hours. 

In 2017, YouTube behemoth MrBeast posted a video in which he mumbles through the entirety of the word and he clocked in just under 2 hours. Other attempts have reportedly taken up to 3 hours. 

The word is the full chemical name of Titin, the largest known protein that’s made up of over 34,000 amino acids. It’s so unbelievably long because it’s essentially listing all the amino acids in the chain that form the protein.

However, it might not be strictly accurate to call this a “word”. You won’t find it in any dictionary as most lexicographers believe such names are “verbal formulae” as opposed to actual words.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

If you want a less controversial contender, “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” is said to be the longest word currently listed in Oxford dictionaries. This is a 45-letter word that refers to a lung disease caused by inhaling tiny silica particles from a volcanic eruption. 

Once again, some purists may take issue with the inclusion of this word as it’s a technical term that's not used in day-to-day communication. 

Furthermore, some argue that the word is contrived – that is to say, the people who created the word intentionally made it ridiculously long to break records. Indeed, it wasn’t organically coined by a doctor or scientist, but forced into the English language in the 1930s by Everett M Smith, the former president of the National Puzzlers' League.

The world’s longest word

Beyond English, many other languages host stupendously extended words. 

German is well-known for its compound words where numerous words are stuck together like Lego bricks. With 63 letters, Germany’s longest was “Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz”, which described a law developed in 1999 during the BSE crisis to regulate beef labeling in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

By 2013, however, the BSE problem was largely controlled and the law was repealed, consigning the word to the dustbin of history. Today, the longest word you’ll find in a German dictionary is “Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung”, which has something to do with car insurance.

According to the Guinness World Records, the longest word in the world features 195 Sanskrit characters, transliterating to 428 letters in the Latin alphabet. Used to describe the Tamil Nadu region of India, it goes something like this: निरन्तरान्धकारित-दिगन्तर-कन्दलदमन्द-सुधारस-बिन्दु-सान्द्रतर-घनाघन-वृन्द-सन्देहकर-स्यन्दमान-मकरन्द-बिन्दु-बन्धुरतर-माकन्द-तरु-कुल-तल्प-कल्प-मृदुल-सिकता-जाल-जटिल-मूल-तल-मरुवक-मिलदलघु-लघु-लय-कलित-रमणीय-पानीय-शालिका-बालिका-करार-विन्द-गलन्तिका-गलदेला-लवङ्ग-पाटल-घनसार-कस्तूरिकातिसौरभ-मेदुर-लघुतर-मधुर-शीतलतर-सलिलधारा-निराकरिष्णु-तदीय-विमल-विलोचन-मयूख-रेखापसारित-पिपासायास-पथिक-लोकान्