Sunday, October 25, 2009

Fun with Words

Common words in general text
Most of the longest English words are not likely to occur in general text, meaning non-technical present-day text seen by casual readers, in which the author did not specifically intend to use an unusually long word.

The longest words likely to be encountered in general text are deinstitutionalization and counterrevolutionaries, with 22 letters each.

A computer study of over a million samples of normal English prose found that the longest word one is likely to encounter on an everyday basis is uncharacteristically, at 20 letters.

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