The 31 Most Hard-to-Pronounce Words in the English Language (2024)

There are too many As for this one to roll off the tongue easily, and if you're wondering what it means, you're not alone. Anathema — that is, someone or something intensely disliked — is in the top 1% of looked-up words on Merriam-Webster.

Even Nemo couldn't pronounce this word in the Pixar movie — and he lives in one! If you can get through the first two syllables, you're in the clear.

Those double Cs spell trouble. Just like the similarly named Arctic, the southern pole often gets renamed the Ant-ART-tic.

For most people, it's the longest word they know. For others, it's a bona fide tongue twister at a whopping total 28 letters and 13 syllables. (Psst, it means being opposed to the withdrawal of state support from an established church.)

No, it's not just the booze talking. Discussing beer-making bars while sober is hard enough thanks to that tricky middle syllable.

Metathesis strikes again! It doesn't help that many people also confuse cavalry (armed forces on horseback) with the place Calvary, as in the Bible.

It's so, so easy to skip that "tuh" sound, but just because you're relaxing doesn't mean you should give up on enunciation.

Dissimilation is another linguistic phenomenon you can blame mispronunciations on. That's when similar consonants or vowels in a word become less alike, e.g. defibrillator becoming "defibyulator."

The first R in deteriorate gets the same treatment. You could try to say it correctly, or just pick one of many, many synonyms instead: decay, decline, degenerate, devolve ... and that's just the Ds!

Take heart. Almost everyone sounds like they have a lisp when they pronounce explicit.

Sometimes exponentially get exponentially harder to say the more you try to say it.

Here's another case of dissimilation, except people mispronounce this month so often that many dictionaries accept it either way. According to Merriam-Webster, "The \y\ heard from many speakers is not an intrusion but rather a common pronunciation of the vowel U after a consonant, as in January and annual."

At 29 letters, floccinaucinihilipilification has earned the unofficial title of the longest non-technical word in the English language. Don't let its length fool you. It simply means the act or habit of estimating something as worthless.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper recently used this word on air and quickly prompted a 4,695% surge in lookups on Merriam-Webster. A synonym for dishonorable or despicable, it's perfect for talking about controversial politics — if you're brave enough to say it, that is.

Those double Ss are absolutely killer. Thankfully, most people don't live on narrow strips of land and can ignore the geographical term altogether.

Library (not "liberry") is so hard to say that Merriam-Webster can cite files where even college presidents and professors use the dissimilated form.

The historic state name comes from the native people's Algonquian word, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. But for people outside of New England, that last S has the unfortunate tendency to turn into an "sh" sound.

You may use this common word often enough, but if you're saying it as "off-ten," you're technically in the wrong. Merriam-Webster prefers the T-less version since it better reflects the evolution from its Middle English roots.

Buzz, hiss, splash, meow — those so-simple words all are perfect examples of onomatopoeia, which is the act of naming something similar to the sound associated with it. Good luck saying — and spelling — this doozy!