Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanocon Definition!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanocon a real word? What is the definition of pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanocon?, As covered on TV tonight, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis is a real word. This word was created by Everett M. Smith in 1935 and was recognized as as a 45 letter word in the New York Herald Tribune that year which wrote as follows:

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis succeeded electrophotomicrographically as “the longest word in the English language recognized by the National Puzzlers’ League at the opening session of the organization’s 103rd semi-annual meeting held yesterday at the Hotel New Yorker. The puzzlers explained that the forty-five-letter word is the name of a special form of silicosis caused by ultra-microscopic particles of silica volcanic dust.”

It then appeared in the 1939 supplement to the Merriam-Webster New International Dictionary, Second Edition.

There are two spellings to the word:
1. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis
2. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

So is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanocon a real word? Not according to Wiktionary, Wikipedia, Merriam Webster, or Ask.com’s Dictionary.

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