English Chess Forum

Which word becomes shorter if you add two letters to it?

owl

add et and you get owlet, which is a shorter owl.

MJMcCready wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 3:45 am

Which word becomes shorter if you add two letters to it?

Short

Yes, both correct.

Can I have arbitrage then?

Not sure what that means.

Sorry, it was my attempt at humour.
An arbitrageur is someone who takes up opposing positions on a financial instrument and benefits from the spread. They are both 'long' and 'short' so I guess they could be described as a 'shorter', but I am slightly worried we are going to get transferred to the pedantics' thread.

What is the longest word in the English language? and I think we really need two answers here.

p.s. You cannot have language

Matthew Turner wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 12:10 pm

What is the longest word in the English language? and I think we really need two answers here.

In my school days it was antidisestablishmentarianism. Then there was something beginning 'flocci....'

I think now there may be a lengthy scientific compound word, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a wordplay answer too.

No points at all there Paul, sorry

Edit: probably being a bit harsh there, I guess there is something in the 'wordplay' comment

Matthew Turner wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 12:10 pm

What is the longest word in the English language? and I think we really need two answers here.

In my schooldays, it was "smiles", as there is a mile between the first and the last letter.

Brilliant, and it still is. I don't think skilometres is a word.

Paul Habershon wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 10, 2021 12:21 pm

In my school days it was antidisestablishmentarianism. Then there was something beginning 'flocci....'

floccinaucinihilipilification. If I've counted, and spelt, right it's one letter longer than antidisestablishmentarianism.

Nowhere near long enough though.

pneumonovolcanoultramicroscopicsilicoconiosis (from memory)

like most scientific words, you split it up to say it...

pneumono-volcano-ultra-micro-scopic-silico-coniosis

And the earlier long one was floccinaucinihilipilification (the art of considering something as worthless) - hence the "nihili" in the middle.

I did have an example of a very long chemical name (most of which have numbers and hyphens), but this was split by brackets only, and that was much longer than that "p" word.

The "international nonproprietary name" abamectin is a bit easier than its IUPAC names - see http://www.alanwood.net/pesticides/index_cn_frame.html

When I started getting good at IUPAC names, my trainer gave me that to name to shut me up for a day or so.