why is the word 'long' shorter than the word 'short'?
398582
oh my god, that just blew my mind!?!?!
29138
apparently, you're not a fan of irony.\nit's like long is shorter than short.
249667
Just to mess with us. We abbreviate such shorter words as street and doctor but use a larger word to define the act of doing so!
18641
But why stop at 10?  Supposedly over 5% of English words are derived from Greek.\n\nBut here are some examples:\n* mania\n* program\n* panic\n* problem\n* angel\n* utopia\n* tuna\n* idea\n* hero\nand of course * alphabet
681562
to make the word a little shorter? i dunno lol
38343
It's timeouts.  The word is one word, not two - as in, timeout, not time out.  So hence, following English rules, the plural form would have the s at the end of the single word.  Plus, if you check out the closed captioning in football games, you'd hear (and read!) the announcers say timeouts several times in the closing minutes of each half.
405478
They would be far away from each other if only the word "apart" was apart from "ments" hahhaa. No for real, apart is not a suffix so that means that if you see it in a word it doesn't mean all the time that the word is apart from "meaning"
670741
good question, which makes me wonder why abbreviation is such a long work.
1052533
The answer is language. In the phrase the English Language "the" is the first word, "English" is the second, and "language" is the third word.
387175
Chinese names are short compared to other counrties. Usually they only have first name and last name, no middle name. So in Chinese, normally a name is only 2-4 characters. Chinese Pingying (which tells us how to pronounce the Chinese word)is used in the English or other languages as name. Pingying is much longer than the real Chinese characterm, making the Chinese name about 2-10 letter1 long in first name, 2 to 6 letters long in last name.\n\nI hope this doesn't confuse you.
1076553
The longest word in any major English language dictionary is Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, a 45-letter word supposed to refer to a lung disease, but research has discovered that this word was originally intended as a hoax. It has since been used in a close approxmation of its originally intended context, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim. See the separate article for details.\n\nThe Guinness Book of Records, in its 1992 and subsequent editions, declared the "longest real word" in the English language to be floccinaucinihilipilification at 29 letters. Defined as "the act of estimating (something) as worthless", its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741. In recent times its usage has been recorded in the proceedings of the United States Senate by Senator Robert Byrd [1], and at the White House by Bill Clinton's press secretary Mike McCurry, albeit sarcastically. It is the longest non-technical word in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.\n\nAntidisestablishmentarianism (a 19th century movement in England opposed to the separation of church and state) at 28 letters is one of English's longest words.\n\nThe 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), but only because he used it.\n\nThe humuhumu-nukunuku-a-pua‘a, or reef triggerfish, is Hawaii's official state fish [1]. At 21 letters (22 counting the okina) it is one of the best known very long one-word names for an animal. It is often asserted that "the name is longer than the fish."\n\nAlthough only fourteen letters long, sesquipedalian deserves a mention. It is derived from a nonce word used by the Roman author Horace, in his work Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry). The quote is as follows: "Proicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba," which means, "He throws aside his paint pots and his words that are a foot and a half long". The Oxford English dictionary[2] lists sesquipedalianism ("the practice of using words one and a half feet long"), and further derivations can be created as described in the Constructions section below.
696356
A "long" three yards is actually longer than a "short" three. "Long three" is used when the distance needed is slightly over three yards, but less than four.\n\nA "short" three yards is if the distance needed is almost three yards exactly, or perhaps even slightly less.
349135
it's actually very simple- it is in fact based on the removal of vowels to shorten the material being written.\n\n example:\nits actlly vry smpl- n fct bsd on rmvl o vwls 2 shrtn mtrl bng wrtn
192100
Almost the same as in English - just the "a" would be pronounced more clearly = longer.
619387
Long play or short?  Short play- quotation marks\nLong play (book length) underline.  \nIn the old days, typewriters didn't have italics so the choices to set a long work apart from a short were underlining (long) or quotation marks (short).
992749
"smiles" is the longest word because there is a mile between the first letter and the last. :)
742229
Depends on what you mean:\n\n1) If you mean fewest letters there are THREE (not two, as many suggest):not just a and I, but also O (as used in addressing someone, e.g., in prayer -"O Lord") \n\n2) If by shortest you mean the length of the PRINTED word, than "I" wins out over "a" and "O".\n\n3) I you mean shortest in SOUND, that is, in the length of TIME it takes to speak it, "a" in expressions like "a man" (sounding like "uh") is the shortest/quickest to say.   "O" and "I" take a bit longer because they actually each have a combination of TWO vowel sounds (a 'diphthong') -- "O" in English adds a quick u-sound to the end; "I" is pronounced "ah-ee".   (When "a" is emphasized it is also a diphthong - "eh-ee".)\n\nActually, by this last measure "uh" and the exclamations "ooh!" and "ah!" and  are as short as "a", and "oh" is the same as "O".