At 36 letters long, it’s one of the longest words in the dictionary. <\/p>
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words. Sesqui<\/em> is Latin for one and a half, and the phrase \u201csesquipedalia verba<\/a>\u201d was used as long ago as the first century BCE by the Roman poet Horace, to criticise writers who used words \u201ca foot and a half long\u201d.<\/p>\n Converting this into a fear of long words, should really only require us to add -phobia at the end, but the longer version appears to have been coined by the American poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil<\/a> in 2000, who presumably added the extra syllables for literary effect. Like aibohphobia (fear of palindromes) this is an amusing wordplay, not a genuine medical condition.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n Asked by: Adam Worthy, via email<\/strong><\/p>\n To submit your questions email us at questions@sciencefocus.com (don\u2019t forget to include your name and location)<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n At 36 letters long, it’s one of the longest words in the dictionary. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":23235,"template":"","categories":[30],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"< 1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/01\/what-is-hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.jpg",1200,511,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/01\/what-is-hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/01\/what-is-hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia-300x128.jpg",300,128,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/01\/what-is-hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia-768x327.jpg",768,327,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/01\/what-is-hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia-1024x436.jpg",800,341,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/01\/what-is-hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.jpg",1200,511,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/01\/what-is-hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.jpg",1200,511,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"At 36 letters long, it's one of the longest words in the dictionary.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/23234"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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