The longest word in the French language

Guess what I learned last night at the family dinner table:

anticonstitutionnellement

At 25 letters, apparently it is the longest French word. Even the 8-yr-old knew this.

And what does it mean? As you might guess: unconstitutionally. Which has a mere 18 letters.

This got me to thinking about English. What's our longest word? Are you sitting down, seatbelts fastened? You'll need to brace yourself. Because it's (deep breath, now):

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

Say what? At 45 letters, it means (according to Wikipedia which is quoting the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive source) "a factitious word alleged to mean 'a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs.'" Well, now. I guess we could all win that question on Jeopardy, right?

But I have to tell you, German's got us all beat. It has a word with a whopping 63 characters, and it's:

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

[which, literally translated, breaks up into: Rind (cattle) - Fleisch (meat) - Etikettierung(s) (labelling) - Überwachung(s) (supervision) - Aufgaben (duties) - Übertragung(s) (assignment) - Gesetz (law), or in other words, "Beef labelling supervision duty assignment law".]

I won't even begin to try and pronounce that; I'm afraid I might sprain my mouth or my brain would explode with the effort. And I'll never understand why, oh WHY does German INSIST on combining so many separate words into ONE? English has compound words, too -- such as lifetime, grandmother, afternoon -- but we usually stop at merging just two together, and leave it at that.

At least the French longest word is one you might actually end up using during your lifetime.