Men of Britain, we should be ashamed
Posted 5 April 2007 at 11:14AM by Simon Dickson in Light relief
A BT-sponsored poll has found that Britain's favourite word is 'love'. Aah, isn't that sweet. But if you look at the responses from men only, our favourite is actually 'antidisestablishmentarianism'. Is it just me, or is it really quite depressing that the men of Britain should choose a word which most of them couldn't spell easily, and only a tiny number actually know the meaning of?
At 28 letters, it's commonly believed to be the longest word in the English language - but as Wikipedia explains, there's some controversy over that claim. I'm inclined to agree that it's basically just the word 'establish' with two prefixes and three suffixes attached... and therefore, why not tack on a few more?
The AskOxford site, run by the people behind the Oxford English Dictionary, says the longest words for which there are 'genuine (if rather obviously deliberate) examples' are antidisestablishmentarianism and floccinaucinihilipilification (even longer, at 29 letters). But whilst there are longer words in the dictionary, these are mostly 'merely inventions', created solely for the purpose of being long words.
Tags: antidisestablishmentarianism, bt, dictionary
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2. At April 16, 2007 6:11 PM, Mike Reed wrote:
If it wasn't for Blackadder, hardly anyone would have heard of "antidisestablishmentarianism" - or as King George put it "antidistictlyminty....." Now theres a word............
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1. At April 12, 2007 5:23 PM, MSpence wrote: