A) If you mean -fewest number of LETTERS, the shortest must have ONE letter.

In English there are three of these — a, I, O — so you could call it a three-way tie.

(The last is used as part of the “vocative”, when addressing a person, “O king,live forever!”)

B) The shortest in physical size –that is, the narrowest– would be “I”

C) Making the fewest/least sounds, or shortest in time to PRONOUNCE its sound(s)?

1) If we are only choosing from a, I and O

I would argue for “O”

Note that the ENGLISH words a, I and O, though each just one letter long, are each the combination of TWO vowel SOUNDS (called a “diphthong”):

a = eh + ee

I = ah + ee

O = oh (think the purer Spanish “o”) + (a very brief) oo

The /ee/ sound of “a” and “I” is more “stretched out”, as opposed to the brief /oo/ sound at the end of “O” (so that many English speakers don’t notice it, unless they compare how “o” is pronounced in Spanish or Italian). As a result, the

2) If we go JUST be the number of sounds of the word, not by its spelling, then the “pure” vowel sounds (with just ONE sound, not a combination of two) or other words with just one sound, would be the winners, though we ordinarily SPELL them with extra letters.

Notice that all of these are “interjections” (not typical words, and not found in all dictionaries, but words nonetheless)

ah

eh (depending on dialect; some pronounce it as a diphthong, sounding like “ay”)

ee! (used for screaming!)

mm (good!)

sh(h) (“sh” is a digraph — two letters used to represent just ONE sound, cf. th and ph)

AND “tut” or “tsk” — when properly pronounced as a “velar click” (and NOT the way they LOOK like they should be pronounced!)

I almost want to add ugh! (as when you’ve been hit in the gut; the g is NOT pronounced). But if you listen closely you’ll hear there are TWO sounds –the vowel sound is preceded by what’ a called a “glottal stop”. (Same might happen with “eh”, but not necessarily.)

I seriously don’t know how you would choose one of these over the others as “shortest”. (And I hardly know WHAT do with something like “zzz”… used to represent sleeping, more specifically, a SNORING sound…. is that ONE sound? At any rate, it’s usually NOT short!)

__________________________

LONGEST WORD

A) In English –

1) Sticking to “ordinary” words found in English dictionaries:

The standard answer is now

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a 45-letter word supposed to refer to a lung disease

This is the longest word in any major English language dictionary. It was originally created as a hoax, but has been adopted as a legitimate term because it closely resembles the characteristics of the condition and has been recognized in other major dictionaries.

It you find that unacceptable, the longest “real English word” according to the Guinness Book of Records (and attested from at least 1741) is the 29-letter word “floccinaucinihilipilification”(“the act of estimating (something) as worthless”)

Of course, “antidisestablishmentarianism” is ALSO 29 letters, though some question whether IT is not simply another a word created for length, rather than for USE. Also at 29-letters is “electromicrographically”.

2) Technical terms — in principle there is no limit to the length of such words

Here is a chemical compond with 61 letters —

sodium­meta­diamino­para­dioxy­arseno­benzoe­methylene­sulph­oxylate

3) Even better — Place Names!

Taumatawhakatang­ihangakoauauot­amateaturipukaka­pikimaunga­horonuku­pokaiwhenuak­itanatahu (85 letters) — a hill in New Zealand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_word_in_English

B) The WORLD’S longest word

If we disallow the simple manufacture of words for length (which several languages have the tools for), the longest I’ve seen is the Swedish word NORDÖSTERSJÖKUSTARTILLERIFLYGSPANINGSSIMULATORANLÄGGNINGSMATERIELUNDERHÅLLSUPPFÖLJNINGSSYSTEMDISKUSSIONS

INLÄGGSFÖRBEREDELSEARBETEN (130 letters), “preparatory work on the contribution to the discussion on the maintaining system of support of the material of the aviation survey simulator device within the north-east part of the coast artillery of the Baltic” (Guinness, 1996)

http://www.a-z-dictionaries.com/blog/?page_id=77

C) For FUN

The longest word is “beleaguered” –with a LEAGUE in the middle! (beating out the old answer formed similarly — “s-mile-s”)

Or Red Skelton’s answer — the longest word is the one following the announcement, “And now a word from our sponsor”!

The longest word ever recorded in an English dictionary is “pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” which is a rare lung disease, but the longest word ever recorded in a scientific publication is “acetylseryltyrosylserylisoleucylthreonylserylprolylserylglutaminyl-

phenylalanylvalylphenylalanylleucylserylserylvalyltryptophylalanyl-

aspartylprolylisoleucylglutamylleucylleucylasparaginylvalylcysteinyl-

threonylserylserylleucylglycylasparaginylglutaminylphenylalanyl-

glutaminylthreonylglutaminylglutaminylalanylarginylthreonylthreonyl-

glutaminylvalylglutaminylglutaminylphenylalanylserylglutaminylvalyl-

tryptophyllysylprolylphenylalanylprolylglutaminylserylthreonylvalyl-

arginylphenylalanylprolylglycylaspartylvalyltyrosyllysylvalyltyrosyl-

arginyltyrosylasparaginylalanylvalylleucylaspartylprolylleucylisoleucyl-

threonylalanylleucylleucylglycylthreonylphenylalanylaspartylthreonyl-

arginylasparaginylarginylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylvalylglutamyl-

asparaginylglutaminylglutaminylserylprolylthreonylthreonylalanylglutamyl-

threonylleucylaspartylalanylthreonylarginylarginylvalylaspartylaspartyl-

alanylthreonylvalylalanylisoleucylarginylserylalanylasparaginylisoleucyl-

asparaginylleucylvalylasparaginylglutamylleucylvalylarginylglycyl-

threonylglycylleucyltyrosylasparaginylglutaminylasparaginylthreonyl-

phenylalanylglutamylserylmethionylserylglycylleucylvalyltryptophyl-

threonylserylalanylprolylalanylserine” which is a 1185-letter chemical compound.

RE:
what is the shortest word in the world?
longest word also..?

The longest word in the English Dictionary is “SMILES”, because there is a mile between the first and the last letter

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovalcanoconiosis – a volcanic disease and also the longest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_word_in_English

The longest word in any of the major English language dictionaries is

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,

a 45-letter word which refers to a lung disease contracted from the inhalation of very fine Silicon dioxide particles specifically from a volcano. Research has discovered that this word was originally a hoax. It has since been used in a close approximation of its originally intended meaning, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim.

The Oxford English Dictionary contains

pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (30 letters).

The longest non-technical word in major dictionaries is

flocci­nauci­nihili­pili­fication at 29 letters. Consisting of a series of Latin words meaning “nothing” and defined as “the act of estimating something as worthless”, its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741.

Antidisestablishmentarianism (a nineteenth century movement in England opposed to the separation of church and state) at 28 letters is still in colloquial currency for being one of the longest words in the English language. But the use of additional suffixes could stretch the word to ‘antidisestablishmentarianistically,’ with 34 letters. See below: Constructions.

The longest word which appears in William Shakespeare’s works is the 27-letter honorific­abilitud­initatibus, appearing in Love’s Labour’s Lost. This is arguably an English word (rather than Latin), only because it was Shakespeare who used it.

In his play Assemblywomen (Ecclesiazousae), the ancient Greek comedic playwright Aristophanes created: Lopado­te­macho­se­lacho­galeo­kranio­leipsano­drimhypo­trimmato­silphio­parao­melito­katakechymeno­kichlepikossypho­phatto­peristeralektryonop­tekephallio­kigklopeleiol­agoiosiraio­baphetraganop­terygon, a word of 183 letters which describes a dish by stringing together its ingredients.

Henry Carey’s farce Chrononhotonthologos (1743) holds the opening line: “Aldiborontiphoscophornio! Where left you Chrononhotonthologos?”

James Joyce made up nine 100 and one 101-letter words in his novel Finnegans Wake, the most famous of which is Bababadal­gharagh­takammin­arronn­konn­bronn­tonn­erronn­tuonn­thunn­trovarrhoun­awnskawn­toohoo­hoordenen­thurnuk. Appearing on the first page, it allegedly represents the symbolic thunderclap associated with the fall of Adam and Eve. As it appears nowhere else except in reference to this passage, it is generally not accepted as a real word. Sylvia Plath made mention of it in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, when the protagonist was reading Finnegans Wake.

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, the 34-letter title of a song from the movie Mary Poppins, does appear in several dictionaries, but only as a proper noun defined in reference to the song title. The attributed meaning is “a word that you say when you don’t know what to say.” The idea and invention of the word is credited to songwriters Robert and Richard Sherman.

In 1973, Pepsi’s advertising agency Boase Massimi Pollitt used a 100-letter but several-word term “Lip­smackin­thirst­quenchin­acetastin­motivatin­good­buzzin­cool­talkin­high­walkin­fast­livin­ever­givin­cool­fizzin” in TV and film advertising. [6]

In 1975, the 71-letter (but several-word) advertising jingle Twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun was first used in a McDonald’s Restaurant advertisement to describe the Big Mac sandwich.