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The main difficulty in writing to this topic is stretching it to the 200-word minimum. I pulled it off in a related topic-the longest English word containing only one syllable-by discoursing on Galway Kinnell's poem "Blackberry Eating" and his comparison of the words "strengths" and "squinched" to the many drupelets of single blackberries.

It would be fitting to say something humorous about my choice of the longest English word containing all the syllables in order, since that word is "facetious." To make the word a bit longer and to incorporate the semi-vowel y, I could add the suffix "ly" thereby producing the adverb "facetiously," which, if I am counting correctly (numbers are not my thing) contains eleven letters. What more can I say?

Well, since I am told that there is "1 error that need [sic] to be fixed" - that being the fact that my first two paragraphs, though adequately covering the subject, number only 755 of the required 1200 characters, I must needs expatiate. Fortunately, in contrast to numbers, words tumble from this retired English teacher almost unbidden.

I feel I should point out that my choice of "facetiously"-a word known to all literate speakers of our language - outstrips in length that of my noble linguist friend and now competitor Taranis, in his currently number-one-rated message addressed to someone named Rohit, whom I don't know.

I note also that Taranis's posting is far shorter than my first two paragraphs and wonder how he got away with that. I could also point out that Taranis's word selection, a variant of "aegilops" (a genus of grasses) is absent from Webster"s Third New International Dictionary Unabridged. That is to say, "aegilops" is indeed present in said reference work but no such suffixed form as the one Taranis uses in order to include the final vowel "u."

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