This article lists some of the longest words in the French language.
As in many languages, chemical nomenclature may be used to construct indefinitely long chemical names (if referring to fictional molecules), and therefore is not on this list. The chemical name of titin could be translated, and therefore would be the longest technical word in the French language.
The longest word listed below, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobique (38 letters) means, ironically, "suffering form the fear (or phobia) of long words". The word is formed from the Latin word sesquipedalia (singular sesquipedalis ), which the Ancient Roman poet Horace used in Ars Poetica to describe excessively long words; literally, it means "a foot-and-a-half long".
Like the other adejctives in the list, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobique can be pluralised by adding the letter s to the end. The adjective interdépartemental (18 letters), which also appears in the list, can be made longer by appending the letters es, which gives its plural, grammatically gendered form.
| Word | Letters | Syllables | Part of speech | Translation | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobique | 38 | 13 | Adjective | hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobic | [1] |
| dichlorodiphényltrichloroéthane | 31 | 11 | Noun | dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane | |
| hexakosioihexekontahexaphobie | 29 | 13 | Noun | hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia | [2] [1] |
| intergouvernementalisation | 26 | 10 | Noun | intergovernmentalisation | [1] |
| anticonstitutionnellement | 25 | 9 | Adverb | anticonstitutionally | [1] |
| apopathodiaphulatophobie | 24 | 10 | Noun | apopathodiaphulatophobia | [3] [4] [5] |
| désinstitutionnalisation | 24 | 9 | Noun | deinstitutionalization | |
| autocheirothanatophobie | 23 | 9 | Noun | autocheirothanatophobia | [6] |
| paraskevidékatriaphobie | 23 | 10 | Noun | paraskavedekatriaphobia | [7] [1] |
| dyspondéromorphophobie | 22 | 8 | Noun | dysponderomorphophobia | [8] |
| magnétoplasmadynamique | 22 | 9 | Adjective | Magnetoplasmadynamic | |
| interdépartemental | 18 | 7 | Adjective | interdepartmental | [9] |
| triskaïdekaphobie | 17 | 6 | Noun | triskaidekaphobia |
The identity of the longest word in English depends on the definition of a word and of length.
French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien) largely supplanted. French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the (Germanic) Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to the French colonial empire, there are numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French.
In linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning. Examples of false friends include English embarrassed and Spanish embarazado 'pregnant'; English parents versus Portuguese parentes and Italian parenti ; English demand and French demander 'ask'; and English gift, German Gift 'poison', and Norwegian gift, both 'married' and 'poison'.
A thesaurus, sometimes called a synonym dictionary or dictionary of synonyms, is a reference work which arranges words by their meanings, sometimes as a hierarchy of broader and narrower terms, sometimes simply as lists of synonyms and antonyms. They are often used by writers to help find the best word to express an idea:
...to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed
Quebec French, also known as Québécois French, is the predominant variety of the French language spoken in Canada. It is the dominant language of the province of Quebec, used in everyday communication, in education, the media, and government.
A loanword is a word at least partly assimilated from one language into another language, through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term that is well established in the linguistic field despite its acknowledged descriptive flaws: nothing is taken away from the donor language and there is no expectation of returning anything.
Lingala is a Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser degree as a trade language or because of emigration in neighbouring Angola or Central African Republic. Lingala has 20 million native speakers and about another 20 million second-language speakers, for an approximate total of 40 million speakers. A significant portion of both Congolese diasporas speaks Lingala in their countries of immigration like Belgium, France or the United States.
Alsatian is the group of Alemannic German dialects spoken in most of Alsace, a formerly disputed region in eastern France that has passed between French and German control five times since 1681.
Wolof is a Niger–Congo language spoken by the Wolof people in much of the West African subregion of Senegambia that is split between the countries of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Unlike most other languages of its family, Wolof is not a tonal language.
Old French was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th and the mid-14th century. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a group of Romance dialects, mutually intelligible yet diverse. These dialects came to be collectively known as the langues d'oïl, contrasting with the langues d'oc, the emerging Occitano-Romance languages of Occitania, now the south of France.
Comorian is the name given to a group of four Bantu languages spoken in the Comoro Islands, an archipelago in the southwestern Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar. It is named as one of the official languages of the Union of the Comoros in the Comorian constitution. Shimaore, one of the languages, is spoken on the disputed island of Mayotte, a French department claimed by Comoros.
Haitian Creole, or simply Creole, is a French-based creole language spoken by 10 to 12 million people worldwide, and is one of the two official languages of Haiti, where it is the native language of the vast majority of the population. Northern, Central, and Southern dialects are the three main dialects of Haitian Creole. The Northern dialect is predominantly spoken in Cap-Haïtien, Central is spoken in Port-au-Prince, and Southern in the Cayes area.
Norman or Norman French is a French dialect which can be classified as a langue d'oïl. The name "Norman French" is sometimes also used to describe the administrative languages of Anglo-Norman and Law French used in England. For the most part, the written forms of Norman and modern French are mutually intelligible. The thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon was the first to distinguish it along with other dialects such as Picard and Bourguignon. Today, although it does not enjoy any official status, some reports of the French Ministry of Culture have recognized it as one of the regional languages of France.
Gallo is a regional language of eastern Brittany. It is one of the langues d'oïl, a Romance sub-family that includes French. Today it is spoken only by a minority of the population, as the standard form of French now predominates in this area.
Middle French is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the mid-14th to the early 17th centuries. It is a period of transition during which:
The English language terminology used in the classification of swords is imprecise and has varied widely over time. There is no historical dictionary for the universal names, classification, or terminology of swords; a sword was simply a single-edged or double-edged knife.
The longest word in any given language depends on the word formation rules of each specific language, and on the types of words allowed for consideration.
Futunan or Futunian is the Polynesian language spoken on Futuna. The term East-Futunan is also used to distinguish it from the related West Futunan (Futuna-Aniwan) spoken on the outlier islands of Futuna and Aniwa in Vanuatu.
Kituba is a widely used lingua franca in Central Africa. It is a creole language based on Kikongo, a Bantu language. It is a national language in Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
This article describes some of the longest words in the Spanish language.
