h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I seem to remember being told that the longest non-science word was "antidisestablishmentarianism" - 28 letters (meaning something to do with being conservative with a small 'c'). I may very well be wrong. In fact, I'm almost totally sure somone in the forum will prove me wrong.

As I remember, 'antidisestablishmentarianism' means disagreeing with those who think that the monarch (in the UK) should not be the head of the Church of England.

Another word I have come across before is 'floccinaucilihilipilification' (honest) which apparently means 'the action of estimating as worthless'

Like on the Antiques Roadshow, where they build the punter up and then tell them the object is worth less than their bus fare to bring it down?

Ah, yes!

I especially like the bit where the punter feigns indifference (with no success) to the question 'Have you ever thought about how much it might be worth?'

It's even more fun when they say something like "Well, if you'd kept it in the box, it'd be worth £500,000 - but in this condition I'm afraid it's only worth ten quid."

if you look at the word and squint slightly all the 'y's line up and form diagonal lines which give me a funny feeling in my prostate. perhaps. i should lie down.

A search on altavista turned up the following link: http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words11.html
It has a lot of interesting detail about various long words - and antidisestablishmentarianism doesn't even get a mention! Neither does the 'longest word' of this page... but then, let's face it, who's going to be bothered to type that lot out?

Nice link. Both antid... and flocc... are on there. Good to see. Doesn't the German language have some horrendously long compound nouns? My failing memory throws up strassenbahnhaltenstelle - street train station stop place (or something) - meaning tram stop.

I htink its a ploy by the German ink and paper makers. Tram stop hardly takes up any space or ink while your word uses about ahlf a page and a bottle of ink (or two ball point pens or a ribbon on a typewriter).

Hmmm...
By the way, how do you spell that Welsh train station?

Something like
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrdrobwyllllantisiliogogogoch.
But I wouldn't swear to it.
Known as Llanfairp.g. I believe.

Actually, floccinaucinihipilification is 29 letters long and therefore (just) beats antidisestablismentarianism. I believe that flocc...(etc) was invented by Shakespeare, but I don't know which of his works it crops up in and I don't know why he bothered.

There is one town in England that has the longest website that i know of, but I cannot remember the name of it. Maybe one of you can? I know it was a link of the day on http://www.userfriendly.org

And it's a really funny sign to go past, particularly if you're not expecting it.

Llanfair PG was a made up name to attract tourists (it needed something to attract them!) at the start of the century. It means something like - place where the doe runs under the wych hazel by the pool on the hill - well something like that - my welsh is only at the "how are you, I am OK" stage, so this is just from what I remember

My mum went there once on holiday, so if it was designed to attract tourists, it worked.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch (you missed out the 3rd 'n' Vestboy ) means:

"The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near
the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave"


hth,
zb

makes it sound a lot more interesting than it really is!

and a lot bigger too

I have cnly once ever seen floccinaucinihipilification in print once
and did try and find a dictionary with it in but to no luck.
The place I saw it was the book The Number Of The Beast by Robert
Heinlein.
At least I now know what it means