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<h4 style="margin: 12pt 0cm 3pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left" align="left"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; color: blue; font-family: verdana">DO NOT CONFUSE</span></h4><h4 style="margin: 12pt 0cm 3pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left" align="left"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; color: blue; font-family: verdana"> <font size="3"><font face="Helvetica"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: blue">credible</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="color: blue"> with <b>creditable</b>: <b>credible</b> means 'believable, convincing', whereas <b>creditable</b> means 'deserving acknowledgement and praise'.<p></p></span></font></font><p></p></span></h4>

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<p align="left">DO NOT CONFUSE</p><p align="left"><font color="#000066"><font face="Helvetica"><b><span lang="EN-US">defuse</span></b><span lang="EN-US">, 'remove the fuse from (an explosive device)' or 'reduce the danger or tension in (a difficult situation)', with <b>diffuse</b>, which means 'spread over a wide area'.</span></font></font></p>

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what is the difference between

syntax vs. grammar

personality vs. character

message vs. letter

importance vs. significance

compulsory vs. obligatory

several vs. many

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<p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto" align="left"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">What is the longest English word?</span></b></p><span style="color: #000066"><p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto" align="left"><br />We do have genuine (if rather obviously deliberate) examples in our files of <i>antidisestablishmentarianism</i> (28 letters) and <i>floccinaucinihilipilification</i> (29 letters), which are listed in some of our larger dictionaries. Other words (mainly technical ones) recorded in the complete <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on"><i>Oxford</i></place></city><i> English Dictionary </i>include: <p></p></p></span><p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left" align="left"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">otorhinolaryngological (22 letters), <br />immunoelectrophoretically (25 letters), <br />psychophysicotherapeutics (25 letters), <br />thyroparathyroidectomized (25 letters), <br />pneumoencephalographically (26 letters), <br />radioimmunoelectrophoresis (26 letters), <br />psychoneuroendocrinological (27 letters) <br />hepaticocholangiogastrostomy (28 letters), <br />spectrophotofluorometrically (28 letters), <br />pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters). <p></p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto" align="left"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">Most of the words which are given as 'the longest word' are merely inventions, and when they occur it is almost always as examples of long words, rather than as genuine examples of use. For example, the medieval Latin word </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">honorificabilitudinitas</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (honourableness) was listed by some old dictionaries in the English form </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">honorificabilitudinity</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (22 letters), but it has never really been in use. The longest word currently listed in <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Oxford</place></city> dictionaries is rather of this kind: it is the supposed lung-disease </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconio sis</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (45 letters). <p></p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto" align="left"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">In Voltaire's </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">Candide</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">, Pangloss is supposed to have given lectures on </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">metaphysico-theologo-cosmonigology</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (34 letters). In Thomas Love Peacock's satirical novel </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">Headlong Hall</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (1816) there appear two high-flown nonce words (one-off coinages) which describe the human body by stringing together adjectives describing its various tissues. The first is based on Greek words, and the second on the Latin equivalents; they are </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">osteosarchaematosplanchnochondroneuromuelo us</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (44 letters) and </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">osseocarnisanguineoviscericartilaginonervo medullary</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (51 letters), which translate roughly as 'of bone, flesh, blood, organs, gristle, nerve, and marrow'. <p></p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto" align="left"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">Some editions of the Guinness Book of Records mention </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">praetertranssubstantiationalistically</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (37 letters), used in Mark McShane's </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">Untimely Ripped</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (1963), and </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupre ovitriolic</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"> (52 letters), attributed to Dr Edward Strother (1675-1737). <p></p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto" align="left"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">This kind of verbal game originates, so far as records attest, with the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, inventor of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land (</span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">Nephelokokkygia</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">). <p></p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto" align="left"><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">The formal names of chemical compounds are almost unlimited in length (for example, </span><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">aminoheptafluorocyclotetraphosphonitrile</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; color: #000066; font-family: helvetica">, 40 letters), but longer ones tend to be sprinkled with numerals, Roman and Greek letters, and other arcane symbols. Dictionary writers tend to regard such names as 'verbal formulae', rather than as English words. <p></p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: left; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto" align="left"><span style="color: #000066; font-family: helvetica"><p> </p></span></p>

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