Coming up on Word Matters, ginormous words.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Neil Servin, Amon Shea,
Peter Sokolowski and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Among the perennial questions posed to people in the dictionary business is this.
What is the longest word in the dictionary?
There are a number of famous contenders, but is there a clear champion?
Amon, Neil, Peter, and I will lay out all the syllables for you.
There's a small set of questions that lexicographers get asked over and over and over again,
and one of them is, what is the longest word in the dictionary?
Now we all know there is no the dictionary so we can talk about what the longest word in Merriam-Webster's dictionaries are.
The longest word in our unabridged dictionary is Whoa.
The longest word in the maryonwebster.com dictionary is acrylonitrile butadiene styrene.
That one's got some hyphens in it,
so it's not as impressive as new mono ultramicroscopic silicovolcano coneosis.
I can tell you've been shedding these words, as they say in the jazz part.
Stephen, practicing.
I have.
I have been practicing.
It's true.