The longest anagrams of a single word into another single
word tend to involve either obscure scientific terms or very
little mixing of letters. The longest of all, at 27 letters,
involves both:
hydroxydeoxycorticosterones
=
hydroxydesoxycorticosterone
According to the Guinness Book of Records the longest non-scientific
English words that form mutual anagrams are the 18-letter ones
below, but again there is hardly any mixing:
conversationalists
=
conservationalists
Restricting ourselves to well-mixed anagrams, the largest-known
pair of scientific terms weighs in at 17 letters:
basiparachromatin
=
marsipobranchiata
whilst this 14-letter pair is probably the longest in anything
like everyday use:
undefinability
=
unidentifiably
The following list of 12-17 letter single-word mutual anagrams
was compiled by William Tunstall-Pedoe and Larry Brash. The list
does not include pairs in which more than 3 consecutive letters
from one word are repeated in sequence in the other, but does
include obscure, technical and hyphenated words.
17 letters
- basiparachromatin = marsipobranchiata
Charles Holding, 1971
16 letters
- thermonastically = hematocrystallin
John Edward Ogden, 1978
15 letters
- nonuniversalist = involuntariness
- refragmentation = antiferromagnet
- megachiropteran = cinematographer
- centauromachias = marchantiaceous
Eric Albert, c. 1986
14 letters
- protuberantial = perturbational
- proletarianize = prerealization
- undefinability = unidentifiably
- interrogatives = reinvestigator
= tergiversation
- nitromagnesite = regimentations
- rotundifoliate = titanofluoride
13 letters
- thysanopteran = parasyntheton
- undemocratise = documentaries
- suprarational = pro-Australian
- unmaledictory = documentarily
- recreationist = contrarieties
- pictorialness = personalistic
- superintended = unpredestined
12 letters
- cameralistic = acclimatiser
- declamations = anecdotalism
- pharmacolite = metaphorical
- manometrical = commentarial
- spectatorial = poetastrical
- courtmartial = matriculator
- triangulated = adulterating
- reoccupation = cornucopiate
- preeducation = deuteranopic
- declinations = nondeistical
- tropicalised = prediastolic
- tracheophyte = hypothecater
- sectionalise = nesosilicate
- stereoptican = inspectorate
- replications = inspectorial
- semiromantic = cremationism
- miscreations = romanticises
- incorporates = procreations
- disagreement = demagnetiser
- man-of-letters = forestalment
- mountaineers = enumerations
- remonstrates = reassortment
- germinations = anti-Negroism
- strontianite = interstation
- technetronic = ethnocentric
- mediocrities = iridectomise
- computerised = pseudometric
- cryptotermes = spectrometry
- limnocryptes = polycentrism
- identifiably = definability
- nondialectic = coincidental
- subtractions = obscurantist
- stationarily = antiroyalist
- subelongated = obtuse-angled
