Comments on: What word has the highest Roman numeral value?

By: Richard Howland-Bolton

Richard Howland-Bolton — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:42:13 +0000

but surely the IMM in ‘IMMunoCoMproMIseD’, is 1,999 for a total of 4,600? :-)
rhb

By: schrisomalis

schrisomalis — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:50:43 +0000

True, although they’re actually pretty good with scientific terms in listing the major inflected forms. I’m only able to find one Google hit on ‘mammatocumuloid’, a jocular usage, not a scientific one.

By: gaston umlaut

gaston umlaut — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 08:08:12 +0000

Don’t forget, the OED doesn’t list all inflected forms, and it does have ‘mammatocumulus’, of which ‘mammatocumuloid’ would be a predictable and expected inflection.

By: schrisomalis

schrisomalis — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:53:33 +0000

Yes, ‘immunocompromised’ is it, and it would help if I learned to add and give the correct total, which is, as you say, 4602, not 4502.

By: Stirling Westrup

Stirling Westrup — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:48:53 +0000

Hah! I’m pretty sure I found your word: ‘immunocompromised’ for 4602. I found a few higher scorers but I suspect they aren’t words:

HOMOSUMHUMANINILAMEALIENUMPUTO : 5103
I think this is just a Latin phrase, but I can’t tell for sure as my Latin isn’t good enough. The only Google hits appear to be word lists.

DEMI-MOHAMMEDAN / PSEUDO-MOHAMMEDANSIM : 5001
These appear to be real words but they have hyphens and so probably don’t count. I did manage to find the latter without the hyphen, but that seemed an unusual usage.

MARIEIMMACULESMOBLATDE / MARIEIMMACULEESEMOBLATDE : 4702
These appear to be Latin species names and so probably don’t count even if I could find them being used, which I can’t.

By: schrisomalis

schrisomalis — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:45:22 +0000

That’s a good one – it is in the OED. Still one short.

By: Stirling Westrup

Stirling Westrup — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:32:22 +0000

Best I could find was ‘dynamometamorphism’ at 4501, and I can’t define it, but I do get about 21300 hits on google.

By: schrisomalis

schrisomalis — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:18:49 +0000

It just occurred to me that one interpretation of the phrase “the highest “score” in Roman numerals” would be that the numerals have to occur in order. In that case, none of the words I’ve found higher than 4000 qualify. But I think this would be an inane interpretation, so I choose to ignore it.

By: schrisomalis

schrisomalis — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:15:08 +0000

I’d rule (since it’s my game, I get to do so) that it has to appear in the Oxford English Dictionary to qualify, and neither of those are there. But I like the way you think!

By: gaston umlaut

gaston umlaut — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:49:43 +0000

Hmm, ‘antimuhammadanism’ would make 4,502, if we can consider that a word. How about ‘mammatocumuloid’? It’s real (it gets a google hit) and it weighs in at 4,651.