Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Quotes

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis n. [mass noun] an artificial long word said to mean a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust.

PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS (the longest word in this dictionary). The longest word to be encountered in Britain is the Welsh place name

The one that every lexicographer offers as proof is "antidisestablishmentarianism." It's a word plenty of people are familiar with, but most of our citational evidence for it is in lists of long words, not in running prose, and when it does appear in running prose, it appears in sentences like "'Antidisestablishmentarianism' is a long word." When tasked with prying meaning out of a bunch of citations like that, you quickly discover that "antidisestablishmentarianism" is rarely ascribed a meaning in text. It's not the only one. "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" - a word that puzzlers and lexicographers call "P45" - sure looks like and sounds like the name of a great disease, and it is entered in our Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, but it does not have any meaningful use. In fact, it appears to have been coined by the president of the National Puzzler's League in 1935 just to see if dictionaries would fall for it. We did. We're a little more careful now.

PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,” said

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’ — fuck off! No, hold on, it’s the longest word in the dictionary; it’s the name of a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine silica particles, specifically from a volcano; and if you break it down into its constituent parts you can master the spelling quite easily. ‘Pneu-mono-ultra-micro-scopic-silico-volcano-coni-osis.’ There! Done! Hooray!