List of the longest English words with one syllable The longest English word of one syllable (in some dialects) is the eleven-letter squirrelled, as in "I've squirrelled away my nuts for the winter." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the ten-letter scraunched, appearing in a 1620 translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote, is also a very long word for being only a single syllable. It is a largely obsolete form of scrunched or crunched. Both of these two "longest one-syllable word" claims are questionable, subject to variations in pronunciation. The eleven-letter word broughammed, while readily pronounceable as one syllable in all dialects, is questionable on other grounds. There are a number of nine-letter words of a single syllable. Unsurprisingly, most of these long words contain one or more digraphs (e.g., rr or ai) and the occasional trigraph (e.g., tch). That is, multiple letters are used to represent a single sound. Additionally, neither the -ed preterite past tense ending for verbs, nor the -s plural ending for nouns increases the syllable count for words, so it is unsurprising that the longest words would use these endings. Note, however, that in early Modern English, the -ed ending was frequently pronounced with a schwa or /I/ or /E/, resulting in another syllable. Even today, the e is pronounced as schwa (ə) in some dialects, resulting in an increased syllable count. Aside from the -ed pronunciation issue, scrauncheds claim is further weakened by the fact that English spelling was largely unstandardized throughout the early Modern English period until the advent of modern dictionaries. 1620 is well within the early Modern English period. Additionally, scraunched is somewhat obsolete. List of nine-letter English words of a single syllable: broughams craunched scratched scraughed screeched scrinched scritched scrooched scrounged scrunched sprainged spreathed straights strengths stretched throughed thrutched Note that strengths manages to have only one vowel letter. It is also the most complex syllable in English, its consonants and vowels being distributed as CCCVCCCC ([strɛŋkθs]). Finally, one can consider the use of an apostrophe as an extension to the word length. Under this assumption, nouns using the plural -s can be modified to use the singular possessive case ending -'s or the plural possessive -s', resulting in a marginally longer word. List of nine-letter English words, plus apostrophe, of a single syllable: brougham's and broughams straight's and straights strength's and strengths See also Longest word in English External links askoxford.com: What is the longest one-syllable English word? rec-puzzles.org: What words have an exceptional number of letters per syllable? Most Popular Articles: Music    Musical Instruments    Guitar    Classical Music    History    Music Definition    Country Music    Rock Music    Pop Music    Hip Hop    Rap    DJ    Video Games    Casino Games    Poker    Blackjack    Casinos    Real Estate    Loan    Auction    eBay    Marketing    Search Engine Optimization    File Sharing    MP3    Music Industry    Kazaa    Internet    Supermodel    Fashion    Fashion Designers    Erotica    Modeling    Clothing    Boots    Shoes    Diamond Engagement Rings    Diamond    Rugs    Gospel Music    Affiliate    E-Commerce    Radio This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html You may copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license. You must provide a link to http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for use of this content. To view or edit this article at Wikipedia go to http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_longest_English_words_with_one_syllable