OT: is this real?

[Will]

Hey Fyron... "The fully extended name of DNA" is deoxyribonucleic acid. Two words

I think you're saying what the link posted previously was saying, that the specific DNA spoken of is human mitochondrial DNA, and it's fully extended "name" is the longest word of English. Correct me if I'm wrong in that assumption, and disregard the rest of this posting if the assumption is wrong.

I'm still not convinced however, that this is a true word, and not the coded sequence of a specific strand of human mitochondrial DNA. The main reasons are 1) nobody has produced the actual word, only a reference to it and it's approximate length, and 2) the approximate length, IIRC, would coincide with the number of base pairs in human mitochondrial DNA. I can't really think of any other way that a DNA strand would be referred to with a string of such length.

[DavidG]

You guys still arguing about this?

The first posted 'word' is not a real word for the simple reason that it has never been spoken. Most definations of a word have one thing in common. that it is a unit of speech or the written representation of that. 'Speech' being the key word here. Since I assume this 'word' has never ever been spoken it is not a word. (and even if someone did attempt to speak this word I serious doubt it would convey any meaning in spoken form)

[spoon]

Originally posted by Will:
I can remove all the non-letter characters from my keyboard, and pound on it for a few days. The resulting word should be able to convey the concept 'nonsense' to any human who reads it

Unless, of course, you end up with a play written by Shakespeare. Happens to monkeys all the time.

[Fyron]

Words do not have to be spoken to be words. Written/typed words still count as words. And, that word most certainly conveys meaning. It conveys the same sort of meaning that "tetrachloride" conveys.

[Kamog]

They can come up with words as long as they want. They could synthesize bigger and bigger protein molecules or nucleic acid molecules, and I don't think there's a limit to how big a polymer that can be created.

[Cipher7071]

I can think of a way to further obfuscate this issue, but I think maybe I'm just going to leave it alone...aside from this #$R%%7! post.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Words do not have to be spoken to be words. Written/typed words still count as words. And, that word most certainly conveys meaning. It conveys the same sort of meaning that "tetrachloride" conveys.

Well you'd would then be disagreeing with many dictionary definitions of a word who say otherwise. ie that a word is a unit of speech or its written form.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
It conveys the same sort of meaning that "tetrachloride" conveys.

I disagree with this. Say tetrachloride to a chemist and ask him what is means. Now say narfs word.