Why It really is the Longest Word inside the English Language [Science]

This jumble of over one thousand unreadable letters is just not the made of a kitty dancing on a keyboard. It’s a protein found within a deadly disease. And it’s the longest word inside the English language . Probably.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, the obnoxious blob of sound we’re all taught is the longest word on this planet as children, seriously isn’t a real word. It’s artificial verbiage, designed to be the longest word inside the English language, a similar way calorically empty Diet Coke is designed to impersonate a real thing. Which prompts NPR’s Robert Krulwich’s probe into the genuine longest world in English. A mission find ” a word that’s not famous for being long, but a word that describes something real.”

Dug up by Sam Kean in his book The Disappearing Spoon, it’s the 1185-letter word you spot above, a protein within the tobacco mosaic virus, which appeared in 1964. There are longer molecules in existence, like a 1,913-letter word describing a protein inside a tryptophan virus-but they’ve never been printed in their entirety, unlike the winding screed above. Does that rule them out? The rabbit hole goes deeper: [ NPR ]

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This post is tagged: deadly disease, english language, longest word, robert krulwich, tobacco mosaic virus