最長的英文單詞到底有多“喪心病狂”？！

據說“肌聯蛋白”的英文學名有189819個字母！文學作品中最長的英文單詞是一道虛構的菜名，由183個字母組成。而主流字典中收錄的最長英文單詞“矽肺病”由45個字母組成，最長非杜撰單詞“假性甲狀旁腺功能減退”包含30個字母……

1. METHIONYLTHREONYLTHREONYGLUTAMINYLARGINYL … ISOLEUCINE
肌聯蛋白

Note the ellipses. All told, the full chemical name for the human protein titin is 189,819 letters, and takes about three-and-a-half hours to pronounce. The problem with including chemical names is that there’s essentially no limit to how long they can be. For example, naming a single strand of DNA, with its millions and millions of repeating base pairs, could eventually tab out at well over 1 billion letters.
注意此處的省略號。人體肌聯蛋白的完整化學名稱總共有189819個字母，讀完需要三個半小時。把化學名稱列出來的問題是，其長度基本上沒有限制。例如，根據一串DNA所包含的數百萬重復堿基對為其命名，最終取出來的名字可能超過10億個字母。

2. LOPADOTEMACHOSELACHOGALEOKRANIOLEIPSAN …P TERYGON
大亂燉

The longest word ever to appear in literature comes from Aristophanes’ play, Assemblywomen, published in 391 BC. The Greek word tallies 171 letters, but translates to 183 in English. This mouthful refers to a fictional fricassee comprised of rotted dogfish head, wrasse, wood pigeon, and the roasted head of a dabchick, among other culinary morsels.
文學作品中的最長單詞出自阿里斯多芬尼斯于公元前391年發表的劇作《女議員》。這個希臘單詞有171個字母，翻譯成英文單詞后變為183個字母。這個冗長而拗口的單詞指的是一道虛構的大燉菜，包含了腐爛的狗鯊頭、隆頭魚、斑尾林鴿以及烤小??頭和其他烹飪食物。

3. PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS
矽肺病

At 45 letters, this is the longest word you’ll find in a major dictionary. An inflated version of silicosis, this is the full scientific name for a disease that causes inflammation in the lungs owing to the inhalation of very fine silica dust. Despite its inclusion in the dictionary, it’s generally considered superfluous, having been coined simply to claim the title of the longest English word.
矽肺病的英文名有45個字母，是主流字典中收錄的最長單詞。這是矽肺病的英文學名全稱，silicosis（矽肺病）的“加長版”。矽肺病是一種因為吸入細微矽塵導致肺部發炎的疾病。盡管這個單詞被收入字典，但一般來說，人們認為這個名稱多此一舉，是為了獲得最長英語單詞的頭銜而杜撰的。

4. PARASTRATIOSPHECOMYIA STRATIOSPHECOMYIOIDES
水虻

The longest accepted binomial construction, at 42 letters, is a species of soldier fly native to Thailand.
Parastratiosphecomyia sphecomyioides是英語中公認的最長（生物學）二種名稱結構，包含42個字母，指的是一種源自泰國的水虻。

5. PSEUDOPSEUDOHYPOPARATHYROIDISM
假性甲狀旁腺功能減退

This 30-letter thyroid disorder is the longest non-coined word to appear in a major dictionary.
這種甲狀腺功能紊亂病癥的英文名由30個字母組成，是主流字典中收錄的最長非杜撰詞。

6. FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION
輕蔑

By virtue of having one more letter than antidisestablishmentarianism, this is the longest non-technical English word. A mash-up of five Latin roots, it refers to the act of describing something as having little or no value. While it made the cut in the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster volumes refuse to recognize it, chalking up its existence to little more than linguistic ephemera.
這個單詞憑借“一字之差”，超過antidisestablishmentarianism（反對教會與國家分開學說），成為最長的非技術性英語單詞。它由5個拉丁語詞根組成，用來形容認為某件事物沒有什么價值。雖然這個單詞被《牛津英語詞典》收錄，但《韋氏詞典》卻將其拒之門外，因為它在英語中不過是一個“曇花一現”的單詞。

英文來源：mentalfloss.com
翻譯&編輯：董靜
審校：yaning