“Anticonstitutionally” is often considered the longest word in the French language. Wrongly! Some terms would go well beyond the 25 letters of the latter.
If you’re asked what the longest word in the French language is, chances are you’ll answer “anticonstitutionnellement”, which means “opposing the constitution”. This 25-letter word is therefore very long with its prefix, its suffix and its doubled consonants. However, it is misleading. It is, in fact, not even part of the top five longest words in Molière’s language. It is preceded by other terms, certainly very technical, but above all with more letters.
Already in the political domain, “unconstitutionally” is preceded by “intergovernmentalizations” which has 27 letters in the plural. It is defined as a joint implementation of several governments. These political terms are, however, beaten in length by two names of phobia: the first is “hexakosioïhexekontahexaphobia”. The second name is “hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia”. There are 29 and 36 letters in these words respectively. These fears are not very well known and are quite rare: they are, in order, the fear of the number 666, seen as that of the devil and that of… words which are very long!
Between the two is “dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane” and its 31 letters which designate an insecticide popular with farmers. To find even longer words, we have to turn to science. 39 letters, this is the length of the word “Rhinopharyngitolaryngographologically”. The definition is a little easier to guess: it means a graphic representation of nasopharyngitis. It is even in this area that the number 1 was found, it has 49 letters and is unpronounceable! It’s also difficult to write it without reversing letters. “Aminomethylpyrimidinylhydroxyethylmethythiazolium” is the full name for vitamin B2. It plays a leading role in food processing. It leaves “unconstitutionally” far behind since it has almost double the number of letters.
These terms being very technical, they have however not been recognized as being the longest by the French Academy. If you write numbers in letters, you can also achieve records. Since the spelling reform in 1990, numbers less than a million can be written with hyphens. Some exceed 70 letters. The number 494 494, or four hundred and ninety-four thousand, four hundred and ninety-four, spans 73 characters. Add a few million or billion, and the possibilities are endless. Who says better ?