Like the other phobias in the list, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobie can be pluralised by adding the letter s to the end. 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'. The longest word listed below, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobie (36 letters) is, ironically, the fear (or phobia) of long words. The chemical name of titin could be translated, and therefore would be the longest technical word in the French language. This article lists some of the longest words in the French language.Īs 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.
