Ciekawostka: "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order

Evidence: 64 • authority: 72

A palindrome () is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as madam or racecar, the date "22/02/2022", or the sentence "A man, a plan, a canal – Panama". The 19-letter Finnish word saippuakivikauppias (a soapstone vendor) is the longest single-word palindrome in everyday use, while the 12-letter term tattarrattat (from James Joyce in Ulysses) is the longest in English. The word palindrome was introduced by English poet and writer Henry Peacham in 1638. The concept of a palindrome can be dated to the 3rd-century BC, although no examples survive. The earliest known examples are the 1st-century AD Latin acrostic word square, the Sato…

Evidence: 64 • authority: 72

The identity of the longest word in English depends on the definition of "word" and of length. Words may be derived naturally from the language's roots or formed by coinage and construction. Additionally, comparisons are complicated because place names may be considered words, technical terms may be arbitrarily long, and the addition of suffixes and prefixes may extend the length of words to create grammatically correct but unused or novel words. Different dictionaries include and omit different words. The length of a word may also be understood in multiple ways. Most commonly, length is based on orthography (conventional spelling rules) and counting the number of written letters. Alternate…

Evidence: 54 • authority: 80

What is the Longest Word in the English Language? What About Yiddish?

Evidence: 54 • authority: 72

A heterogram (from hetero-, meaning 'different', + -gram, meaning 'written') is a word, phrase, or sentence in which no letter of the alphabet occurs more than once. The terms isogram and nonpattern word have also been used to mean the same thing. It is not clear who coined or popularized the term "heterogram". The concept appears in Dmitri Borgmann's 1965 book Language on Vacation: An Olio of Orthographical Oddities but he uses the term isogram. In a 1985 article, Borgmann claims to have "launched" the term isogram then. He also suggests an alternative term, asogram, to avoid confusion with lines of constant value such as contour lines, but uses isogram in the article itself. Isogram has a…

Evidence: 45 • authority: 80

Further Studies in Old English Word Order

Evidence: 45 • authority: 72

A word is a basic element of language that carries meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguists on its definition and numerous attempts to find specific criteria of the concept remain controversial. Different standards have been proposed, depending on the theoretical background and descriptive context; these do not converge on a single definition. Some specific definitions of the term "word" are employed to convey its different meanings at different levels of description, for example based on phonological, grammatical or orthographic basis. Others sugges…

Evidence: — • authority: 35