Words and Numbers 2


How many words with ten syllables does English have?

According to my wordlist (extracted from the digital version of the 1997 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) the answer is: None

But it's not a simple as that, because it lists "floccinaucinihilipilification" (the act of estimating something to be valueless) with seven vowels or vowel+glide pairs, and thus seven syllables. Except I make it eleven.

"Praetertransubstantiationalism" is a word from catholic theology that I learned in seminary. I still don't know exactly what it means, but I reckon it's also got eleven syllables. It's not in the SOED.

Everyone's favourite pointlessly long word - "Antidisestablishmentarianisn" - isn't in there either, but I think it's got twelve syllables. Likewise "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" (a disease of the lungs) is absent but, by my reckoning, has sixteen.

I can sort-of pronounce "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" (nineteen syllables), mainly because my father lived there in the first world war.

Some people stick extra schwa vowels into words to make them easier to pronounce. Others glide adjacent vowels together, or skip over entire syllables. The two longest common surnames in Britain are "Cholmondalay" and "Featherstonehaugh" - pronounced (and often respelled) "Chumley" and "Fanshaw".

So, still no dectasyllablical squipidalianisms, but the SOED lists eight words with nine syllables. See how many syllables you say them with:

Reticuloendothelial (9)
Arteriosclerosis (I make it 7, probably)
Extraterritoriality (9)
Immunoelectrophoresis (9)
Otorhinolaryngology (9)
Polytetrafluoroethylene (9)
Propionibacterium (8)
Stachybotryotoxicosis (9)

1 comment:

  1. Extremely long words either of Greek or Latin origin always make me tremble... They're not easy to read at all, because of shwa and glide phenomena which are so common in Portuguese. On the other hand, I find German (rather!) long words most interesting as they always give way to rather long circumloquiums in translation. (Lol!)
    Thank you for being one of a kind!
    :-)

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