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pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (you figure it out and tell me where the stress falls) - n., a supposed disease of the lungs caused by breathing in ultrafine volcanic ash.
It's not a real medical word, but rather coined in 1935 by Everett K Smith in an attempt to create the longest word in the English language. The model is pneumonoconiosis, an alternate form of pneumoconiosis, a real lung disease caused by breathing in particulates such as dust or asbestos, by inserting ultamicroscopic, silico-, and volcano. Smith succeeded insofar as the word is in dictionaries, but given it's only as an example of a long coined word rather than a word in use, I think this is a swing and a miss.
---L.
It's not a real medical word, but rather coined in 1935 by Everett K Smith in an attempt to create the longest word in the English language. The model is pneumonoconiosis, an alternate form of pneumoconiosis, a real lung disease caused by breathing in particulates such as dust or asbestos, by inserting ultamicroscopic, silico-, and volcano. Smith succeeded insofar as the word is in dictionaries, but given it's only as an example of a long coined word rather than a word in use, I think this is a swing and a miss.
---L.
