Wiktionary:Hall of Fame

These entries have exceptionally many definitions, translations, pronunciations, plurals, alternative forms, etc. (The lists are currently maintained manually; some entries may have been missed. Suggest new categories on the talk page. Each category should list only the top 30 entries max.)

Longest etymological chains

 * Terms which passed (by borrowing) through the greatest number of languages on their way to their destination. (Descent through different temporal stages of a language doesn't count, e.g. a word that passed from PIE into Proto-Italic into Latin into Old French into Middle French, and was borrowed into Middle English and survived into modern English, was only borrowed once: otherwise, this becomes just a list of "languages for which we reconstruct, and which we divide up into, the most ancestors".)


 * (Latvian, 7 links): from Livonian, from German, from Latin, from Italian, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit
 * (English, 7 links): from Italian, from French, from Turkish, possibly from Arabic, from Classical Syriac, from Greek, from Latin
 * (Hindi, 7 links): from English, from German, from Russian, from Evenki, from either Tocharian B or Chinese, ultimately (either way) from Pali, from Sanskrit
 * (Japanese, 7 links): from Dutch, from Middle French, from Italian, from Latin, from Ancient Greek, from Akkadian, from Sumerian.
 * (Japanese, 7 links): from English, from Old French, from Italian, from Latin, from Ancient Greek, from Akkadian, from Sumerian.
 * (English, 6-7 links): from Russian, from Polish, partly from Spanish, and partly from German, from Latin, from Greek, from Egyptian
 * and (Tok Pisin and Bislama, 6+ links): from English, from [Old] French, from [Old] Italian, from [Byzantine] Greek, from Persian/Iranian, from some Eastern source [compare Sanskrit, from Dravidian or something else]
 * (Polish, 6 links): from German, from Latin, from Italian, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit
 * (Finnish, 6 links): from Swedish, from [Middle] Low German, from Latin, from Greek, from Middle Indic, from Dravidian/Tamil
 * (Finnish, 6 links) from Russian, from Polish, from Italian (inherited from Latin), from Ancient Greek, from Akkadian, from Sumerian
 * (Finnish, 6 links): from Swedish, from Low German, from Italian, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit
 * (English, 6 links): from German, from Russian, from Evenki, from either Tocharian B or Chinese, ultimately (either way) from Pali, from Sanskrit
 * (Tok Pisin, 6 links): from English, from Latin, from Greek, from Persian, from Elamite, from Sumerian
 * (Japanese, 6 links): from English, from French, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit, from Dravidian
 * (English, 6 links): from French, from Arabic, from Aramaic, from Greek, from Latin, from Gaulish
 * (English, 5-6 links): from New Latin, from German, from Spanish, from Greek, from [Old] Persian, possibly from
 * (English, 4-6 links): from French, from German, from Polish, from Hungarian, from perhaps a Turkic language, from perhaps Manchu

Longest words

 * Ancient Greek: λοπαδο­τεμαχο­σελαχο­γαλεο­κρανιο­λειψανο­δριμυ­ποτριμματο­σιλφιο­καραβο­μελιτο­κατακεχυμενο­κιχλε­πικοσσυφο­φαττο­περιστερα­λεκτρυο­νοπτο­κεφαλλιο­κιγκλο­πελειο­λαγῳο­σιραιο­βαφητραγανοπτερύγων (171 characters)
 * Thai: กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์ (145 characters)
 * German: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz (63 characters)


 * For the longest words in English, see: Category:Long English words

The above list excludes spellings of sign language terms, the longest of which is in American Sign Language: FlatB@InsideChesthigh-PalmAcross-FlatB@InsideChesthigh-PalmAcross FlatB@InsideTrunkhigh-FlatB@InsideTrunkhigh FlatB@DistalCenterChesthigh-PalmBack-FlatB@NearCenterChesthigh-PalmBack FlatB@DistalCenterTrunkhigh-PalmBack-FlatB@NearCenterTrunkhigh-PalmBack (253 characters).

Most anagrams

 * (English, 25)
 * (English, 24)
 * (English, 20)
 * (English, 20)
 * (English, 20)
 * (English, 20)

Direct repeat borrowings

 * Cases where one language repeatedly borrowed the same word from another language.


 * Vietnamese borrowed Chinese 8 times: as, as , as , as , as , as , as , and as.
 * English borrowed Narragansett (plural ) 4 times: as, as , as , and as  (all names for the porgy, Stenotomus chrysops).

Other repeated acquisitions (including through inheritance)
Latin made its way into Portuguese at least 7 times:
 * 1)  is a regular Portuguese descendant,
 * 2)  is another regular descendant,
 * 3) and  is a third regular descendant,
 * 4) while  came (possibly via Spanish) from a reduced Vulgar Latin form macla;
 * 5) meanwhile,  arrived via French,
 * 6)  was borrowed directly from Latin,
 * 7) and  was borrowed via French from Corsican.
 * Furthermore,, which comes from French , is of unclear origin; it may derive from , or it may derive from.

Latin also made its way into English at least 5 times:
 * 1)  was borrowed directly,
 * 2)  (and variant form ) came via French ,
 * 3)  passed through Old French  (losing the 'c'),
 * 4)  came via Corsican (losing the 'l')
 * 5) and  came via the same Corsican route but with an added detour through French.
 * Furthermore,, which comes from French , is of unclear origin; it may derive from , or it may derive from.

Most descendants

 * widely borrowed words
 * Proto-Indo-European *ḱorkeh₂ ("gravel, boulder"; in descendants: "sugar") (260 descendants, of which 174 are instances of borrowing)
 * Proto-Sino-Tibetan (168 descendants, mostly instances of borrowing)


 * widely inherited, inherited by a large number of child languages
 * Proto-Indo-European (191 descendants, mostly instances of inheritance)
 * Proto-Bantu (94 descendants, mostly instances of inheritance)
 * Latin (68 descendants, mostly instances of inheritance)

Most etymology sections a.k.a. most homographs

 * Terms of more than one character
 * 1)  (Yoruba, 20)
 * 2)  (Arabic, 16)
 * 3)  (Middle English, 15)
 * 4)  (Middle English, 15)
 * 5)  (Egyptian, 15)
 * 6)  (Arabic, 14)
 * 7)  (Middle English, 14)
 * 8)  (Japanese, 13)
 * 9)  (Korean, 13)
 * 10)  (Middle English, 13)
 * 11)  (Vietnamese, 13)
 * 12)  (Yoruba, 13)
 * 13)  (English, 12)
 * 14)  (Middle English, 12)
 * 15)  (Tokelau, 12)
 * 16)  (Yoruba, 12)
 * 17)  (Ahom, 11)
 * 18)  (Arabic, 11)
 * 19)  (Arabic, 11)
 * 20)  (Japanese, 11)
 * 21)  (Korean, 11)
 * 22)  (Yoruba, 11)
 * 23)  (Yoruba, 11)
 * 24)  (English, 10)
 * 25)  (Ahom, 10)
 * 26)  (Arabic, 10)
 * 27)  (Arabic, 10)
 * 28)  (Korean, 10)
 * 29)  (Middle English, 10)
 * 30)  (Middle English, 10)
 * 31)  (Norwegian Bokmål, 10)
 * 32)  (Sumerian, 10)
 * 33)  (Yoruba, 10)
 * 34)  (Yoruba, 10)
 * 35)  (Yoruba, 10)
 * 36)  (Yoruba, 10)
 * 37)  (English, 9)
 * 38)  (Urdu, 9)
 * 39)  (Urdu, 9)
 * 40)  (Korean, 9)
 * 41)  (English, 8)
 * 42)  (Old Irish, 8)
 * 43)  (English, 8)
 * 44)  (English, 8)
 * 45)  (Icelandic, 8)
 * 46)  (Hebrew, 8)
 * 47)  (Japanese, 8)
 * 48)  (Korean, 8)
 * 49)  (Portuguese, 7)
 * 50)  (English, 7)
 * 51)  (English, 7)
 * 52)  (English, 7)
 * 53)  (Dutch, 7)
 * 54)  (Persian, 7)
 * 55)  (Classical Syriac, 7)
 * 56)  (Classical Syriac, 7)
 * 57)  (Classical Syriac, 7)
 * 58)  (Korean, 7)
 * 59)  (Korean, 7)


 * Single characters:
 * 1)  (Japanese, 17)
 * 2)  (Chinese, 16)
 * 3)  (Chinese, 15)
 * 4)  (Korean, 14)
 * 5)  (English, 11)
 * 6)  (English, 11)
 * 7)  (Japanese, 11)
 * 8)  (Japanese, 11)
 * 9)  (Korean, 11)
 * 10)  (Chinese, 10)
 * 11)  (Chinese, 10)
 * 12)  (Chinese, 10)
 * 13)  (Chinese, 10)
 * 14)  (Japanese, 10)
 * 15)  (Korean, 10)
 * 16)  (Korean, 10)
 * 17)  (Korean, 10)
 * 18)  (Korean, 10)
 * 19)  (Korean, 10)
 * 20)  (Korean, 10)
 * 21)  (Korean, 10)
 * 22)  (Japanese, 9)
 * 23)  (Korean, 9)
 * 24)  (English, 8)
 * 25)  (Japanese, 8)
 * 26)  (Japanese, 8)
 * 27)  (Japanese, 8)
 * 28)  (Korean, 8)
 * 29)  (English, 7)
 * 30)  (Japanese, 7)
 * 31)  (Japanese, 7)
 * 32)  (Japanese, 7)
 * 33)  (Korean, 7)
 * 34)  (Sanskrit, 7)

Most homophones

 * For Japanese and French, only the top 8 per language are listed.
 * Chinese has not yet been counted.


 * 1) Japanese (35):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 2) Japanese (24):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 3) Japanese (22):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 4) Japanese (22):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 5) Japanese (21):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 6) Korean (19-20): , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 7) Japanese (19):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 8) Japanese (19):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 9) Japanese (19):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 10) Korean (18):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 11) French (18):, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 12) French (15):, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 13) French (14):, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 14) French (13):, , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 15) French (13):, , , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 16) French (12):, , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 17) French (12):, , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 18) French (12):, , , , , , , , , , ,
 * 19) English (10):, , , , , , , , ,

Most meanings

 * (English, 100 senses: 88 verb senses, 12 noun sense)
 * (English, 85 senses)
 * (English, 74 senses: 61 verb and 13 noun senses)
 * (English, 67 senses, including 30 noun senses, 4 adjective senses, 33 verb senses)
 * (English, 40 senses: 36 noun and 12 verb senses)

Most parts of speech

 * (English): 13: letter, cardinal number, noun, article, preposition, verb, pronoun, 2 different preposition sections, adverb, adjective, symbol, particle, interjection
 * Additionally (suffix),  (proper noun),  (suffix),  (interfix and infix) can bring the total number to 18.
 * (Irish): 10: 4 different determiner sections, 4 particle sections, preposition, pronoun
 * (Portuguese): 8: letter, noun, article, pronoun, preposition, interjection, verb, contraction
 * (Old Irish): 6 or 7: article, pronoun, conjunction, determiner, particle, particle (2), preposition
 * (Portuguese): 6: noun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, verb

Most plurals

 * (Arabic, 13)
 * (Arabic, 7) (1 common plural; four masculine plurals; two feminine plurals)
 * (English, 7) (different English spellings of three Hebrew pronunciations)
 * (Arabic, 6)
 * (German, 6)
 * (English, 5) (four non-standard Latin plurals)

Most pronunciations

 * phonemic
 * (Hokkien, 14)
 * (English, 10–12)
 * (English, at least 10 phonemic pronunciations)
 * (English, 8)
 * (English, 5 phonemic pronunciations)


 * phonetic
 * (English, 10)

Most spellings
(Counting the main/lemma spelling.)
 * words
 * 1) Old French:  (271)
 * 2) English:  (64)
 * 3) Middle English:  (44)
 * 4) Old French:  (43)
 * 5) English:  (35)
 * 6) English:  (34)
 * 7) Middle English:  (34)
 * 8) Portuguese:  (33)
 * 9) English:  (28)
 * 10) English:  (26)
 * 11) Portuguese:  (26)
 * 12) Persian:  (26)
 * 13) English:  (24)
 * 14) English:  (24)
 * 15) English:  (24)
 * 16) Portuguese:  (24)
 * 17) Old French:  (22)
 * 18) English:  (22)
 * 19) English:  (21)
 * 20) English:  (19)
 * 21) English:  (19)
 * 22) Armenian:  (18)
 * 23) Chinese:  (18)
 * 24) English:  (17)
 * 25) Asturian:  (17)
 * 26) English:  (16)
 * 27) English:  (15)
 * 28) English:  (15)
 * 29) English:  (15)
 * 30) English: cesarean (12)


 * personal names and related terms
 * 1) English:  (102)
 * 2) English:  (61)
 * 3) English:  (28)
 * 4) English:  (26)
 * 5) English:  (24)
 * 6) Portuguese:  (21)
 * 7) English:  (14)
 * 8) English:  (11)

Most syllables in one character

 * Japanese: (6)
 * Japanese: (5)
 * Japanese: (5)
 * Japanese: (5)
 * Japanese: (5)
 * Japanese: (4)
 * Chinese: Zhaocaijinbao.svg (招財進寶, single-character version not encoded in Unicode) (zhāocáijìnbǎo, 4 syllables)

Most translations
Terms which have translations into the greatest number of languages.

(as of April 15, 2016)
 * 1) water	[2212] - [2506] as of 22:35, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
 * 2) woman	[789] - [879] as of 03:22, 22 August 2016 (UTC)
 * 3) dog	[482]
 * 4) fish	[399]
 * 5) rain	[399]
 * 6) corpse	[381]
 * 7) one	[346]
 * 8) fire	[338]
 * 9) smoke	[331]
 * 10) horse	[326]
 * 11) mouth	[322]
 * 12) coffee	[321]
 * 13) eye	[308]
 * 14) sun	[305]
 * 15) ear	[304]
 * 16) iron	[300]
 * 17) butterfly	[300]
 * 18) tree	[289]
 * 19) four	[287]
 * 20) bear	[287]
 * 21) father	[286]
 * 22) I	[284]
 * 23) house	[276]
 * 24) language	[274]
 * 25) man (2)	[273]
 * 26) bee	[273]
 * 27) heart	[273]
 * 28) book	[272]
 * 29) mountain	[270]
 * 30) five	[268]

Oldest citations

 * sḏꜣ from the, c. 2690 BCE, quoting what may possibly be the oldest known complete sentence in any language
 * 𒄠𒋛 from c. 2nd millennium BCE about animals discussing pooping

=Honorable mentions=
 * citations
 * háček (attestation is exceptionally comprehensive)
 * ek→ég (continuous attestation begins exceptionally early)


 * semantic relations
 * iron, water (exceptionally many kinds of semantic relations)

=Anteroom of Silliness=
 * Things which are technically correct, but comically phrased, incomplete, etc. Made-up senses and joke entries can go in WT:BJAODN.

Silly definitions

 * [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Agrilus&direction=prev&oldid=13881872 Agrilus]: "a genus of boring insects"
 * [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=abst%C3%A8me&oldid=15353975 abstème]: "refusing to communicate with wine in church"
 * cope: "to cover a joint or structure with coping", with the usex "I wanted to become a finish carpenter, but I just couldn't cope"
 * [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=trampolo&oldid=16853316 trampolo]: "not the bird"
 * [//en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=vy-&oldid=5877510 vy-]: "a Czech prefix"

Literal senses of words that usually mean something else (unrelated)

 * English:
 * misled
 * undies
 * , unionized
 * watched
 * misled
 * undies
 * , unionized
 * watched
 * misled
 * undies
 * , unionized
 * watched
 * misled
 * undies
 * , unionized
 * watched
 * undies
 * , unionized
 * watched
 * undies
 * , unionized
 * watched
 * undies
 * , unionized
 * watched
 * undies
 * , unionized
 * watched
 * , unionized
 * watched

Silly spellings

 * a very un-English-looking English word:
 * a very Klingon-looking non-Klingon word:
 * surprisingly not the result of keyboard mashing:
 * something which is the result of keyboard-mashing, across two scripts:
 * Who needs vowel sounds? Not one Bella Coola speaker, because.
 * an ancient word (attested ~2280 years ago) that looks like an emoji: 𑀇𑀥 ("here")
 * a Luxembourgish word with 5 e's in a row:

Words created in error

 * see Category:Ghost words by language

Other silliness

 * one time, Wiktionary held a formal WT:VOTE on which kind of ice cream was best; the result (subject to some dispute!) was either "natural strawberry" or "no consensus"
 * another time, one admin requested verification of a category, so another admin cited it (the page, originally tagged RFC, later ended up on RFM)
 * Category:English terms derived from E (not to be confused with English terms derived from the consumption of E, like ); see also Category:U nouns?
 * methionyl​threonyl​threonyl​glutaminyl​alanyl​prolyl​threonyl​phenyl​alanyl​threonyl​glutaminyl​prolyl​leucyl​glutaminyl​seryl​valyl​valyl​valyl​leucyl​glutamyl​glycyl​...histidyl​isoleucyl​arginyl​seryl​isoleucine (the full chemical name of titin, which is 189,819 characters long and takes over an hour to pronounce)