From the folks who keep track of such things:
SQUIRRELLED (eleven letters), as someone mentioned in this debate
previously, listed in dictionaries as two syllables, but the one
syllable pronunciation of squirrel (to rhyme with whirl, and hence
squirrelled, to rhyme with world) is more common]
and from their website:
SCRAUNCHED (10 letters) and SCROONCHED may be the longest monosyllabic words
in W3. The OED2 has the obsolete STRENGTHED and STREYNGTHES. The American
Heritage Dictionary (4th ed., 2000) has SCROOTCHED as an alternative
spelling for scrooched. Some nine-letter monosyllabic words are CRAUNCHED,
SCHLEPPED, SCHLUMPED, SCHMEERED, SCHMOOZED, SCRAICHED, SCRAIGHED, SCRATCHED,
SCREECHED, SCROOCHED, SCROUNGED, SCRUNCHED, SKREECHED, SKREIGHED, SPLOTCHED,
SQUELCHED, SQUINCHED, SQUOOSHED, STAUNCHED, STRAIGHTS, STRENGTHS, and
STRETCHED [Philip Bennett, Stuart Kidd].
In addition, MWCD10 shows a one-syllable pronunciation of SQUIRREL, so
presumably the 11-letter SQUIRRELLED could be pronounced as one syllable.
Craig Rowland writes, "All dictionaries designate this word to be of two
syllables, but frankly I don't know any Canadian who says it as any way but
one."
Sans suffix I vote for scraunch/scroonch, squirrel, strength and straight as
the longest in letters.
The longest in sound is still a bit of a mystery, and probably dialect
dependent.
Everything you want is on the net if you know how to look. And google
really has changed the world.
Gary
Dec Byron Sacre at: http://gardawg.homestead.com/gardawg.html... Writer's
Hood at http://www.writershood.com/... Poets for Peace.... ˇPoemas sí, balas
no!
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