Talk:List of the longest English words with one syllable

Written vs. spoken language
I have no idea what this is good for when English are actually two different languages - spoken form has quite little what to do with written one. One can write that word also "sqwirld", it is just "another written English". (But, do you know, that quite long words without vowels exist in some languages? Even in the languages with practically phonetic transcription.) [68.94.242.235 20:10, 23 Sep 2004]


 * This page is worthy of an encyclopedia article, even if it is a little on the trivial side. It's interesting information, even if it is comparing apples and oranges to some degree. I've tried to explain the various caveats in the article, though you've pointed out several more, which I appreciate.


 * You're quite right: spoken and written English are quite different these days. A large part of this is due to the Great Vowel Shift and especially the prescriptivism of the early Modern English era. During this time, spelling gradually became less and less phonetic. I'll see what I can do about integrating these caveats into the article, though you are more than welcome to contribute to article yourself.


 * Fascinating point about long words without vowels. If you know any specific examples, please let me know either here on the talk page or on the article itself. Thanks, &bull; Benc &bull; 20:43, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Czech word &#269;tvrthrst :-). Literal meaning is quarter of handful. One can create even quite long sentences without vowels. Very well known is a jawcracker str&#269; prst skrz krk - stick a finger throught a neck. It is possible to create even longer senetnces, Czech language has quite many vowelless words. I can create now for example: Vlk z Vrt, vstr&#269; prst skrz &#269;tvrthrst v smrk. - Wolf from Vrty, stick a finger throught a quarter of handful into a spruce. It sounds a bit artificially but it is a legal Czech sentence :-). BTW, Czech language has also quite many words with one sylable (English too but English has a very simple structure :-)). One can create stories using only one-syllable words. Because Czech is a Slavic language, it is really difficult (but I am not sure whether Englishman can appreciate it). I can show you examples but I would probably break some copyright. Miraceti 06:17, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Wow! That's quite a word! So, how many syllables would &#269;tvrthrst be? My hunch would be 3 - something like &#269;&#601;t - vr&#601; - thr&#601;st (he says, cunningly avoiding interpretting the actual consonant sounds)... - IMSoP 19:03, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Actually, there are only two syllables: &#269;tvrt-hrst. A consonant R (and also L) can be used as a vowel in Czech language. Pronounciation is really difficult (be glad, there is no &#344; consonant as it is in my name:-)). &#268; is like "ch" in English word "chair", R is really rolling off (almost like Finnish R), remaining letters are hopefully clear. Miraceti 18:57, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Graphemes
''Unsurprisingly, each long word contains multiple digraphs and trigraphs. That is, multiple letters are used as part of a single grapheme (e.g., spr).''

This is incorrect, at least from any definition of "grapheme", "digraph", or "trigraph" that I've encountered.

A grapheme (as defined by David Crystal's Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics, and as used by general convention, I believe) is the "minimal contrastive unit in a writing system." So, a letter (e.g. "A", "p", etc.) is a grapheme, but multiple letters together (as in the given example of "spr") are still multiple graphemes

Also, for more than one grapheme/letter to be a digraph or trigraph, they have to represent a single sound. So, ll in "squirrelled" and ch in "scraunched" (among others) are digraphs, but there are no trigraphs in either one. There is no sequence of three letters/graphemes in either word which makes a single sound. EDIT: In my dialect at least; maybe I'm missing something that would be different in other dialects. --JoshRaspberry 04:02, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Oops! You're absolutely right. (And I have Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, so I really should've known better.) I've fixed the sentence in question. Most of these words still contain digraphs, though. But scr certainly isn't a trigraph; it's three distinct graphemes. Thanks for pointing that out. &bull; Benc &bull; 04:38, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * No problem. :) But there's still the problem of using "grapheme" to mean a multi-letter combination. I can't think of a conventional use of the term "grapheme" with which this would fit. A digraph is a digraph because it consists of two graphemes. Additionally, the example of qu as a digraph isn't correct, as the two letters represents the two sounds /k/+/w/. Unless we want to argue that English has in its phonemic inventory the single sound /kw/. What do you think of my edit? --JoshRaspberry 06:32, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Looks good. :-) &bull; Benc &bull; 06:40, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Other, longer words?
If we accept "skworld", what about other longer words that some dialect pronouces as one syllable? I know it isn't more letters, but some folk pronounce "Birmingham" as "brum" which reduces the syllable count from 3 to 1. And presumably if you have suffered the trials of visiting the place, you have been "Birminghamed" or "brumd"? --- SGBailey 14:01, 2004 Sep 24 (UTC)


 * Isn't pronouncing Birmingham as brum more along the lines of a contraction? Still, it's an interesting tidbit; it may be worth mentioning in a section of the article. I don't see why we would ever want to exclude a relevant topic in any of our articles. Examples like this one would need documented sources, though. And maybe even an mp3 or ogg recording of someone using the one-syllable pronunciation, repeated three times for clarity (see above). &bull; Benc &bull; 17:08, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't think you can read "Birmingham" as "Brum": they are two different words. AFAIK, Brum is short for Brummagem which is a dialect form of Birmingham.
 * Oh and while I'm here, the article says "Note, however, that in early Modern English, the -ed ending was frequently pronounced with a schwa or /I/ or /E/, resulting in another syllable. Even today, the e is pronounced as schwa (&#601;) in some dialects, resulting in an increased syllable count." Out of interest which modern dialects do this? None spring to mind. I did wonder if this was inserted by someone confused about the two-syllable pronunciation of "squirrelled", thinking that perhaps we in Merrie Olde England pronounced it "skwur-led". I may be wrong. &mdash; Trilobite (Talk) 22:40, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

More arguments against squirrelled
askoxford.com suprisingly makes no mention of squirrelled when they answer the question on their site.


 * It's also interesting to note that aside from sites that mirror content from wikipedia, a quick google search doesn't mention squirrelled as a single syllable english word, although there are sites that mention that it is sometimes pronounced as one by Canadian speakers.


 * I think the article should mention that squirrelled a contested single syllable word and stick to promoting the words that are commonly accepted as single syllable words. Suppafly 22:19, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Broughammed
What are the arguments against broughammed? The article just says it's "questionable on other grounds". Could we get some specifics? Factitious 01:51, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)


 * The fact that it's a completely silly word? A more sensible answer is that most dictionaries that list brougham do so only as a noun, not a verb (e.g. the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the three Dictionary.com found), so broughammed is not a word according to these dictionaries. - IMSoP 13:53, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * The latest edit showing that broughammed is equal to broomed is totally offbase. Not to mention that broughammed is definitely not a word recognized by any major dictionary. Suppafly 14:53, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Hi! I added that edit because I didn't actually understand how it was pronounced, until I found that brougham (a type of car) was pronounced 'broom' on a website, then extrapolated.  How the hell *is* 'broughammed' supposedly easily pronounced in any dialect with one syllable, anyway?  To me it still looks like "broggemed". Sadly I don't have the URL where I found that, but http://www.mail-archive.com/ql-users@quanta.org.uk/msg03454.html agrees with that pronunciation anyway. --Stevage 22:30, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The broom pronounciation might be right, I've never heard it like that, but the pronunciation guides on a few sites indicate that is acceptible. Honestly though 'broughammed' is not a word and isn't present in any legitimate dictionary that I've found.  I'd be all for someone removing it until it can be verified  as being a real word. Not mention that neither 'broughammed' or 'brougham' are used in common speech. Suppafly 05:25, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Schmaltzed
No to divert attention away from the war over how many syllables "squirreled" has [I say it depends on which side of the pond you are: in the US/Canada it would be one ("squirled") while in the remainder of the English speaking world it would be 2 ("squir-relled", also 11 letters!]...

...but how about "Schmaltzed"? It is mentioned in the OED according to one reference, but strangely is absent from Websters. Many yiddsish words are now in common usage.

The longest word with one syllable
The longest word with one syllable is "grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" and brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

Quarreled
I have to question this one. Quarreled is pronounced Kwo-rəlled. That's definitely 2 syllables. I tried it in American and I just managed to get rid of the 2nd syllable by dropping the r as well. Can somone outside the UK tell me that they pronounce it as one syllable? Big Moira 00:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC) very good :p

I too was drawn to this page by the apparent revelation that quarreled contains only one syllable...

It most certainly does not - it is pronounced, and anyone who says otherwise is either a fool, or is suffering from some sort of speech impediment...N^O^el 05:32, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm gonna remove it Big Moira 21:52, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Pronouncing -ed as a separate syllable
As an individual taught strict American Midwestern enunciation in the mid 1950s I can vouch that -ed was often taught to be pronounced as a separate syllable within my family. The obvious caveat being that -ed words, as spoken rather than as taught, may have been very clipped and precise but not pronounced as an extra syllable. But the teaching was unambiguous. I now have a seven year old and I had been teaching him to pronounce -ed as a separate syllable, passing on my own understanding of the proper enunciation of words. Having read the entries on syllables I've since stopped and am trying to undo that cultural heritage. HeitzsoHeitzso 21:28, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

On the English Orthography
The issue with this page derives from the idea that a grapheme (essentially a letter,) represents a phoneme (sound.) While this is true in basic terms, e.g. /k/ is represented by  (for the purpose of this discussion, we will presume that /k/ is one sound when in reality it can be realised as a number of different sounds, or allophones,) the relationship between grapheme and phoneme is not so simple and therefore claiming a word is longer than another based of the number of graphemes it has becomes somewhat trivial. We must remember that English is written in the Roman alphabet which was created to write Latin, which has a different phoneme inventory, a different set of rules for morphophemic structure, and in fact is not directly related to English. Further to this, when the Roman alphabet was adopted (before the great vowel change,) English itself had a very different phoneme inventory, and the standardisation of the spelling system leaves us with a representation of how the English language used to sound. Many words should now be read as one word, rather than as a sum of their parts. E.g.  is pronounced (British RP) and not  (which would the pronounciation on the assumption that  = /k/,  = /n/, etc.,) which proves the difficulty in describing word length.


 * I'm not sure what you mean by "issue". I think it's clear that "longest" in the page title is in terms of  the number of letters, rather than the number of graphemes, number of phonemes, length of time to utter, or anything else.  The page is a harmless discussion of a piece of trivia, with no reference to serious phonology or historical linguistics. I don't believe it contains any phrases which might suggest otherwise.  jnestorius(talk) 19:06, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Original Research?
So it looks to me like the references here are just attesting to the fact that the listing is a word, not to it being the longest word. It seems to me that this 'list of longest one syllable words' therefore constitutes original research. I would even argue that it is inherently original research unless someone can produce a notable third party source where such a list is published. Any comments? Locke9k (talk) 19:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The references for broughammed, scraunched, and schnappsed explicitly mention being the longest. The list does not claim to be definitive. jnestorius(talk) 12:30, 28 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The expression (and ban on) original research are widely misused and nearly universally misunderstood, but the objections to this list — and certainly some of the words on it — in fact, all but schmaltzed and strengthed — are well taken. — Robert Greer (talk) 19:18, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

schtroumpfed
According to this article, schtroumpfed is a French word. The fact that it was used once by one English writer doesn't make it an English word. Or am I missing something? DoctorKubla (talk) 19:10, 11 February 2013 (UTC)


 * No, schtroumpfed is not a French word, assuming the verb schtroumpfer is a regular -er verb (although it has the 13-letter monosyllabic third-person plural present tense form schtroumpfent). The article's lede contains the caveat "Some candidates are questionable on grounds of spelling, pronunciation, or status as obsolete, dialect, proper noun, or nonce word", to which list I have added loanword. The presence of a word in the table should not be taken to mean that most people or most Wikipedians think that the word is valid; rather, that some people might argue the word is valid. Feel free to discount (mentally) any or all those words you don't approve of. As the Oxford English Dictionary states, "the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference." jnestorius(talk) 08:53, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

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Onomatopoeia
reversion edit summary...
 * Undid revision 955014711 by Jnestorius — that secondary source is a blog, and that blog is probably the reason why Portnoy's Complaint is in there. But the other has no secondary sourcing, and the Indonesian journal article isn't really about one-syllable words. Plus, "Self" has no secondary sourcing. In the end, what we have here is a combination of randomness and OR.

...has too many moving parts; it's time to take this to the Talk: page. Here is the impugned section:

What we have here is the following assertions:
 * 1) Onomatopoeic monosyllables such as interjections may be extended without limit to represent a long drawn-out sound or utterance.
 * 2) Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
 * 3) is in Yann Martel's 1995 novel Self
 * 4) is 45 letters long
 * 5) is a monosyllable
 * 6) Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh
 * 7) is in Yann Martel's 1995 novel Self
 * 8) is 35 letters long
 * 9) is a monosyllable
 * 10) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh
 * 11) is in Portnoy's Complaint
 * 12) is 100 letters long
 * 13) is a monosyllable

I'm not sure whether Drmies is
 * 1) actually skeptical of the factuality of any of those assertions
 * 2) or is personally inclined to believe them but finds the sources inadequate for Wikipedia
 * 3) or believes the entire matter is not relevant to the topic of the article

Rather than address all the various possibilities, I would appreciate it if Drmies could let me know what the problem is. jnestorius(talk) 08:40, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * jnestorius: whether these are really one-syllable words or not remains to be seen. "Onomatopoeic monosyllables such as interjections may be extended without limit to represent a long drawn-out sound or utterance" doesn't even say they should be considered as words, when categorizing them as words seems just awfully trivial. That you can write them doesn't really alter that fact. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa isn't in the dictionary, for instance, not in any dictionary I know of. As for that Jeff Grant article, which I mistakenly categorized as a blog because it was so incorrectly verified (with "Free Library" as the publication venue, turns out it's actually more than that: it is an article published in Word Ways. So a more correct citation is . So, that's all good, in your favor, but what you fail to cite from that article is the following, "let's disallow drawn-out monosyllabic noises and utterances such as the 234-letter cry of anguish (230 A's followed by 4 H's) on the last page of Portnoy's Complaint (1967) by Philip Roth." In other words, the very source you cite to prove they should be included states they should NOT be included. That these utterances occur in the words you cite is not what I'm questioning; what I'm saying is that you shouldn't include them in the first place. The instance from Yann Martel lacks secondary sourcing (in other words, no one seems to have noticed that a. it should be a one-syllable word and that b. Martel's having one is remarkable). Your reference to Grammarphobia and the Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics merely establish that you can write long exclamations by adding more letters, which is not germane here. What you can have is something like "Onomatopoeic expressions like Roth's AAAAHH are not considered one-syllable words" with a citation to Jeff Grant. Drmies (talk) 15:58, 6 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Your comment suggests you have some definition of "word" in mind which is more restrictive than that used in Wikipedia's word article. Language standardization often involves standardising spellings, but variant spellings do exist. Human interjections, and still more nonhuman sounds like "baa", "rattattat", "vroom", "kapow", are less standardised than other word classes, both in their presence in the lexicon and their spelling.
 * There is also the question of linguistic productivity. For example, no dictionary pretends to have a complete list of all words using the prefix un-. Saying it's "not in the dictionary" is unconvincing if the word is formed using a productive process. My contention is that adding extra letters to indicate longer pronunciation is such a productive process.
 * There is also the implicit segregation between the article's "List" section, which is a table of fairly plausible individual candidates, from the other sections, each of which is intended to give only a sample of various unbounded types of less-plausible candidate. I don't agree that Jeff Grant's decision to exclude Portnoy proves he does not consider the 100-letter Aaahh a word. I surmise instead that he excludes words of that type since otherwise his entire list of words of 15 letters at most would be obliterated by a tedious parade of Ooooooooooooooooohs and yeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhs.
 * In summary, I think all your concerns are already addressed by the general hedge in the lede of the article...
 * Some candidates are questionable on grounds of spelling, pronunciation, or status as obsolete, nonstandard, proper noun, loanword, or nonce word.
 * ...in other words, any reader is free to mentally exclude any listed "words" which they consider to fall outside their own personal understanding of what a "real word" is; that does not mean such a reader should delete all such words from the article, since other readers' judgements may differ.
 * jnestorius(talk) 17:08, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Jnestorius, you can fill up this entire talk page, but the bottom line is "I don't agree that Jeff Grant's decision to exclude Portnoy proves he does not consider the 100-letter Aaahh a word". You obviously didn't read the article carefully, since he doesn't "exclude Portnoy"--he excludes "drawn-out monosyllabic noises and utterances such as the 234-letter cry of anguish". Note "noises and utterances": he clearly does not consider these to be words (nor does he say "100-letter word", which again suggests you didn't read it carefully). And that's sort of the end of it: you can argue for "word" all you want, but the one secondary source you have specifically excludes the kind of thing you want in here. Drmies (talk) 19:12, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Grant does not say why he is excluding "noises and utterances" and it is OR of you to infer that it is because he does not consider them to be words. I disagree that the category "noises and utterances" is necessarily disjoint from "word"; I think rather that it is a specific class of word, namely onomatopoeic words. Surely ah is just as much a "noise" or "utterance" as Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh; and surely ah is in the dictionary — indeed, so is aah. The fact that you think I didn't read Grant carefully suggests you didn't read my edit carefully (hint: search for "234"). There are three other secondary sources: Stange is a book by an academic publisher; Jing is a peer-reviewed article; Grammarphobia is admittedly a blog but written by two professional copy-editors. jnestorius(talk) 21:49, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What. I feel like I'm in crazyland. Grant excludes "drawn-out blah blah" from an article called "Long one-syllable words" and your objection is "he doesn't say why", and your conclusion is to include "drawn-out blah blah" anyway. And did you not say "I don't agree that Jeff Grant's decision to exclude Portnoy proves he does not consider the 100-letter Aaahh a word"? So did you not point to, refer to, talk about a "100-letter word" when you talked about a 100-letter word? I don't know what onelook.com is, and I don't care, and none of those articles you point to say what you want them to say. Goodbye. Drmies (talk) 22:28, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I suggest that we ask for a Third opinion. jnestorius(talk) 12:19, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Sure. Drmies (talk) 13:15, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Halfpennyworth
I did some research and it looks like, despite it looking like it should be four or so syllables, halfpennyworth is one syllable, at least in British English. Collins Dictionary and Merriam-Webster are among my sources for this. Kelvinnkat (talk) 03:06, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Neither source says it's only one, and the shorter reading still only looks like two. StAnselm (talk) 04:46, 23 August 2022 (UTC)