The longest Greek word | Hacker News Reader

The longest Greek word

en.wikipedia.org

187 pointsfirloop93 comments

Contains Silphium, a plant which was a common ingredient in the classical world, but now no one knows exactly what it was. (The leading theory is that it's a real plant that went extinct.) There's much about that world that we don't really know.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20170907-the-mystery-of...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

I've looked into this a lot and I'd say the actual leading theory is that it's an infertile hybrid of two Ferula species that grew mostly in African Mediterranean. It likely went extinct from its overharvest and inability to reproduce through seeds.

The Ferula genus contains fennel and asafoetida (aka hing). Ferula drudeana is suspected to be one of the species that was hybridized.

My personal cold take is that it's a forgotten aloe species/hybrid

-has weird succulent morphology as depicted in coinage

Eg https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/75379-Aloe-maculata

-species that grow well (only) in the relevant regions in North Africa

-sap much less sulfurous than hing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloin

-Pliny mentions silphium as laxative/purgative

-Most of all, explains why the leading theory is still so unsatisfactory

Wow, thanks for sharing. That is very cool, so much history in that part of the world. I go to Crete every other year, coasting along its southern side, many ruins of "lost" harbour towns which supposedly were large trade hubs in the mediterranean. I wonder if Silphium played a large role in their economies.

One of the great archeological finds of this decade(https://www.livescience.com/ancient-odeon-discovered-crete) was discovered in Lissus(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissus_(Crete)) in 2022. A great hike from Sougia for those interested, the place truly is beautiful.

>WIKI> The plant may also have functioned as a contraceptive and abortifacient.

I believe this would have been a good reason for its extinction (i.e. over-use).

Aristophanes was such a troll. I can only recommend reading some of his plays, like The Assemblywomen (where this word is from), The Wasps, and The Clouds. They're almost 2500 years old but they've aged incredibly well both thanks to the many amazing translators that have worked on them and because the source material is also solid satire that in many cases is still relevant today.

Plato argued that The Clouds (which is sharp satire of Socrates and his school) was in part what got Socrates convicted and killed. This is obviously debatable but Aristophanes certainly didn't self-censor or mince words.

https://youtu.be/GlGKwS3E3iA?t=77m37s

No bollocks

https://youtu.be/XUQ1xIbziP0

I think the ingredient Silphium described in this dish (Now considered extinct) could be Sea Holly (Eryngium spp). Its highly debated as many authors think it is some extinct variety of fennel, but from the images on the coins it doesnt look like a Fennel.

I believe there are more descriptions of it other than rough depictions on coins

Or Ferula drudeana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferula_drudeana

Could be but the central bulb as made on the coins is unlike a fennel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium , and since this imaginary recipe is a part of a comedy it is unlikely to be edible. If you look at other ingredients they can surely make someone sick.

The best explanation I've heard is that it was a sterile hybrid of two Ferula species. Many Ferula have a long history of mythology behind them. Asafoetida (aka hing) is probably where the heart symbol came from (its roughly heart-shaped root was used as an aphrodisiac).

Silphium similarly had much demand as an aphrodisiac.

This hybrid likely grew in the African Mediterranean and the high demand for it, alongside its inability to reproduce through seed, is probably what led to its extinction.

Romans had very different palates from the modern west.

Legend has it that someone posted the recipe years ago, but the double-whammy of the long title and the HN need to remove "How to make …" broke the site.

What’s mainly annoying is how this has broken HN layout. There’s some CSS for that.

`word-break: break-all;` would solve that.

"solve" is a strong word. The rest of HN would basically be unreadable

Seems okay on mobile, how does it look for you?

Especially not working on mobile because the long word pushes for wider column and therefore a more zoomed out view.

Jfyi the title has been edited now, it was the actual word previously which was not broken and just made the page super wide on mobile.

It was fine on my iOS Safari with a small screen. It automatically hyphenated it, differently depending on orientation.

Presumably not on other browsers, though, as lots of people were complaining.

Safari on iOS 26.2 did not hyphenate it for me. I bet it has something to do with which languages are installed.

Ta!

It will go down in HN-history as the one exception, where it was ok to not use the page title verbatim.

I read the article and was disappointed that the full "word" got cut off, but I know that somewhere, there's a German out there who will post something even longer.

I’m German and think the idea to compound words into one should not really count as the longest / a long word. I mean yes it is but also it isn’t. Like: “ Grundstücksverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung” In the end it’s just slapping words together and count it as one.

Agree

This should have been an April Fools clue on Wheel of Fortune with Vanna White just about to die at the end of having to turn over all the letters.

I am a native Greek speaker with a fair bit of education in Homeric, Classical, and Medieval Greek. Trying to read that word hurts…

> is the longest word ever to appear in literature

Thank goodness Joyce doesn't have the record with his invented words in Finnegans Wake.

I pulled my Liddel and Scott off the bookshelf to see the word in print (I have dictionaries and thesauri on shelves over my desk for easy reference) and discovered that I have the abridged edition.

Probably it's Middle Liddel, I haven't decided to buy the unabriged version due to its unwieldy size, high prize and because it is 80 years old. Apart from this, it's fully available online.

Just started relearning Ancient Greek after twenty years and I highly recommend Cambridge Greek Lexicon.

Generally, I go with wiktionary which is reasonably comprehensive. I remember as an undergrad being stumped by a word in the Septuagint that I could not make any sense of and now I imagine I can search on the inflected form on wiktionary and know exactly where I went wrong. (I would note that as an undergrad I was also pretty thoroughly defeated by Attic Greek. I’ve since learned that the textbook we used, Hansen & Quinn, is pretty rough going, but I’ve also found that the approach taken by the Biblical Greek textbook I worked through (N. Clayton Croy) made what was nearly impossible forty years ago a breeze on the retry nine years ago.

For comparison, one candidate for the longest word in Sanskrit: https://hellenisteukontos.blogspot.com/2010/03/what-is-longe...

> nirantarāndhakāritā-digantara-kandaladamanda-sudhārasa-bindu-sāndratara-ghanāghana-vr̥nda-sandehakara-syandamāna-makaranda-bindu-bandhuratara-mākanda-taru-kula-talpa-kalpa-mr̥dula-sikatā-jāla-jaṭila-mūla-tala-maruvaka-miladalaghu-laghu-laya-kalita-ramaṇīya-pānīya-śālikā-bālikā-karāra-vinda-galantikā-galadelā-lavaṅga-pāṭala-ghanasāra-kastūrikātisaurabha-medura-laghutara-madhura-śītalatara-saliladhārā-nirākariṣṇu-tadīya-vimala-vilocana-mayūkha-rekhāpasārita-pipāsāyāsa-pathika-lokān

It's not actually the longest though; e.g. here's someone asking how to get TeX to hyphenate a routine compound that would be about 1361 characters long in transliteration: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/404690/how-to-make-a...

> Is there really a 797 character long word in Sanskrit?

> Yes its ! Some times even the book completely will be like this. What is the solution?

I'm an Indian, but had sanskrit education only a little not much. It just looks like lots of adjectives bunched together. I mean yes it maybe one word but then it's not a single idea it's just lot of adjectives bunched together to show the entire personality of something or somebody

• That applies to the Greek word too. Obviously these long “words” are compounds made up of distinct morphemes (similar with German examples like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderkennzeichnungs-_und_Rind... or for that matter even shorter English words like antidisestablishmentarianism), the whole thing is one “word” simply because there's a case ending only at the end; you need to read the whole thing as occupying a single role in the sentence it is a part of.

• It is not merely a string of independent adjectives; there's a progression of ideas from one morpheme to the next, just as in any compound. Try here: https://dharmamitra.org/?target_lang=english-explained&input...

HN cut it off at "karab" and I thought this was the generic name of some new drug.

How to never have anyone play Hangman with you again

"Well actually..."

As the word-setter this might be an own-goal. As a word guesser, a random haphazard tactic might get you the word.

I'll Monte-Carlo my point but I have a warm bath tub waiting...

Well. It contains every letter.

Nope, it doesn't contain zeta (ζ), xi (ξ) and theta (θ).

I do this like... every single time (although with a shorter and slightly more common ancient Greek word). It's quite fun actually!

The two words that struck me are this chemical compound [1] (quite artificial as a name if you ask me, but apparently considered as a word), and this perfectly real hill name [2]

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Protologisms/Long_wo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taumatawhakatangi%C2%ADhangako...

Yes, the Titin example is completely ridiculous. On the one hand, the protein Titin is one of the longest sequences. However you can form a 'word' out of any protein or DNA (or other macromolecue or polymer) this way.

The key problem for me is that you would never refer to any polypeptide this way in a sentence. It would be like referring to a piece of software by concatenating its source code into one long 'word'. Meaningless.

That's not a word that's a polypeptide sequence. How and why did that get entered into Wikitionary to begin with? It doesn't belong there.

Next up will they start recording the corresponding DNA sequences as "words" that are a synonym?

Reminds me of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilico...

These too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long_place_names

AKA L181n.

Fun false fact that I just invented : the Monty Python briefly considered to have Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwustle-gerspurten-mitzweimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-shönendanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm to mutter Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon, but John Cleese, who play the man interviewing the last descendent of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schplenden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fried-digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisen-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nürnburger-bratwustle-gerspurten-mitzweimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-shönendanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm, being a fervent Latin teacher opposed the idea because he thought that was Greek nonsense.

Learning some Attic Greek is one of those priority two goals I keep trying and failing to accomplish. Any tips you can share?

It will be much easier if you learn modern Greek first. Keep in mind that it's very hard, even for native Greek speakers. Be prepared to spend a few years doing that ;)

Funny, but as a speaker of Greek I never realised that it's in principle possible to basically create infinitely many, infinitely long new Greek words by stitching together word-roots and connectives, like "λόπαδ-ο τέμαχ-ο", etc.

I mean, has any linguist noticed this? The ability to (again in principle) embed infinitely many sentences is AFAIK an argument for the infinite generativity of natural language. Can the same argument be supported at the word-level also? And does anyone know whether it has?

Also, I think in German it's very common to string together words like that to form longer words. Are there more languages with that characteristic?

There are quite a few agglutinative languages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language

Important knowledge for those suffering from hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.

From what I've read, the German phenomenon isn't actually German-specific after all, and English does it too; the difference is just that English keeps the spaces when written. Like, linguists apparently consider "vending machine" to be a perfectly cromulent compound word (among other things, consider that the stress falls on "vending" instead of "machine," which wouldn't(?) happen if "vending" was being used as a bona fide standalone word). Turns out, there's not even an accepted general definition of what a "word" even is in the first place, because different languages vary so much.

A slightly more thorough discussion from an actual linguist: https://youtu.be/tfnANe2YUwM?si=LAxriH-RuqmUgrxl.

> I mean, has any linguist noticed this?

Yes.

> Also, I think in German it's very common to string together words like that to form longer words. Are there more languages with that characteristic?

Yes. All of them.

> Can the same argument be supported at the word-level also?

Here it depends what you mean by "the word-level". "Words" are commonly taken to be compositionally opaque. Compound expressions are not compositionally opaque and are not "words" in this sense.

Really, never realized it?

Πίτα, τυρό-πιτα, σπανακο-τυρό-πιτα, ζαμπονο-σπανακο-τυρό-πιτα, ...

Dang, you should change it to "Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon" via your admin superpowers!

I doubt that can happen because that would go over the length limit, probably it should be "The Longest Word In Literature"

as for it screwing with mobile site width, on desktop FF putting width small seems to work fine as the word seems to have soft hyphens in it? Because it splits at the window edge with a hyphen in place.

I wrote here or maybe elsewhere that on using opera browser on my phone, it allows word wrap automatically. My mobile experience is almost never broken

I thought it was German and had an awful time trying to parse it. Makes so much more sense once one knows it's Greek.

Even as a native Greek speaker it is hard to parse it.

antidisestablishmentarianism

supercalifragilisticexpialadocious

Is antidisestablishmentarianism supercalifragilisticexpialadocious?

Also this may be a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack :) well back in the day

> Is antidisestablishmentarianism supercalifragilisticexpialadocious?

Not according to SNL's translation of it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eBG8JIGugw

Well observed, sir. I’m felicitous, since, during the course of the penultimate solar sojourn, I terminated my uninterrupted categorisation of the vocabulary of our post-Norman tongue.

I hope you will not object if I also offer my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.

Thus, I’m anaspeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulations.

May I offer you a pendigestatery interludicule? Anything I can do to facilitate your velocitous extramuralisation.

Just make sure you return interfrastically.

Vincent Hana, Country Gentleman's Pig Fertiliser Gazette.

Almost got skewered by Lord Byron on that episode.

Monty Python has its own version. https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/Johann_Gambolputty

I'm mostly, and pleasantly, surprised that Firefox's hyphenation algorithm handles this reasonably.

Why are we transliterating -κιγκλο- as -kigklo- and not as -kinklo-?

I wonder if this is in meter? I know Philoctetes' pain noises are.

It is.

The "context" section of this article is very interesting!

Oh I come across German words bigger than that every now and then.

This is why I quit linguistics, Too many syllables.

An I thought it was about another obscure PHP error.

Nah, just an average Java class name transliterated in Greek with single case.

I want to taste it

Well this certainly mucked with the width of the mobile HN site.

Have you checked out Harmonic? It's an amazing Hacker News android client!

Opera browser can render any page in word wrapping mode

I was wondering what’s wrong with the HN site on mobile today. I thought something from my other safari settings carried over thinking is this another macOS / iOS problem. Good to know this time Apple is not to blame. Interesting psychology here how easy it was for me to go there.

Not on Chrome or Firefox for me. So I assume you are using Safari.

Can someone fix this? I don’t believe it is the first time

The long words must continue until word wrap increases.

A css fix would prevent this.

Also make the damn upvote buttons bigger on mobile.

Hckrnews.com is a far better frontent. Implemented the long line fix, and also preserves topics that were upvoted to the top and subsequently flagged to death by bot farms or the owners.

Brain figured out this title being the culprit of horizontal scroll today. Brain predicted this being the top comment in this thread. Not disappointed.

This is an iOS 26 regression. There are a bunch of soft hyphens in there, which is why it works on other browsers and in previous versions of iOS.

It automatically hyphenates on Firefox mobile, must be a safari issue.

I thought this was a news site for tech, not a Red Hot Chili Peppers lyrics repository

I had ChatGPT spend a few kWh coming up with Algorithmostartupoventurecapitoopensourcolicensioprivacysecuritorustigogolokubernetocloudiosaasodistributedodatabasolatencyphoboshowhnaskhncommentopedantolongformoaillmopromptomancyethicoregulatiocontroversioburnoutikon, which apparently describes the vibe here on HN.

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