Three letter rule poets such as John Milton alternated between short and long forms for function words, depending on whether they occurred on or off the meter. For instance: While many function words have more than two letters ("and", "she", "were", "therefore", etc.), the exceptions to the rule are rather two-letter content words. Only a few of these occur commonly in most texts: the words "go" (which also has a functional usage in the idiom "going to do something"), "ox" and, especially in American texts, "ax". English grammar is relatively flexible about converting words of one class to another, allowing verbal uses such
Longest word in French letter "s" to the end. The adjective "interdépartemental" (18 letters), which also appears in the list, can be pluralised by appending the letters "es". Longest word in French This article lists some of the longest words in the French language. The longest word listed below, "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobie" (36 letters) is the fear (or phobia) of long words. The word is formed from the Latin word "sesquipedalia" (singular "sesquipedalis"), which the Ancient Roman poet Horace used in "Ars Poetica" to describe excessively long words; literally, it means "a foot-and-a-half long". The length of the word "hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobie" is embellished with the prefix "hippopotomonstro"