Word Olympics
OK, everyone. Stretch those jaw muscles and warm up those tongues because we are training for the Word Olympics in today’s Ccaps Blog post.
Do you have hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia? If so, you might want to stop reading this post now.
According to the Wiktionary, hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is the fear of big words. The word is actually a derivative of sesquipedalian (foot and a half), hippopotamus, and monstrum (monster) with the phobia extension added at the end. Though this word is scary enough just at first site, its more popular and scientifically used synonym sesquipedaliophobia isn’t much more user friendly.
Here are a few more big words to get your mouth muscles working:
Honorificabilitudinitatibus is the ablative plural of the Medieval Latin word honorificabilitudinitas, which can be translated as “the state of being able to achieve honors.” It is mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. As it appears only once in Shakespeare’s works, it is a hapax legomenon in the Shakespeare canon. It is also the longest word in the English language featuring alternating consonants and vowels. Now, I bet you did know that… 
One quattuorquinquagintaquadringentillion (represented by a 1 with 1365 zeroes after it), is the natural number between a tresquinquagintaquadringentillion (a 1 with 1362 zeroes after it) and preceding a quinquaquinquagintaquadringentillion (a 1 with 1368 zeroes after it). Quattuorquinquagintaquadringentillion is recognized as the natural number with the longest name (without hyphenation), and it contains 37 letters.
Floccinaucinihilipilification is the estimation of something as worthless. The term is usually used as an example of a very long word. It originates from the Latin words flocci, nauci and pili, and it appeared in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (published in separate sections from 1884 to 1928).
Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, also known as Lake Webster, is a small lake in South Massachusetts, in the town of Webster. The full form of its name is said to be the longest American place name. The translation of the name of the lake is believed to be, “Fishing Place at the Boundaries — Neutral Meeting Grounds.”
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a lung disease caused by breathing in particles of siliceous volcanic dust. Supposedly, the President of The National Puzzlers’ League, E. Smith, created this new “longest word” with 45 letters in 1935. While he wasn’t able to convince people to use it, it was included in various dictionaries!
And finally, because I know you were waiting for it…
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is an English word in the song with the same title in the musical film Mary Poppins. The song was written by the Sherman Brothers, and sung by Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke. The roots of the word have been defined as follows: super- “above,” cali- “beauty,” fragilistic- “delicate,” expiali- “to atone,” and docious- “educable,” with the sum of these parts roughly meaning, “atoning for educability through delicate beauty.”
Ok, get a glass of water and rest those jaws; we have done enough work for one day. Now it is time for some fun!
