Finnegans Work

Overview

Sentences (by . ! ?): 15,175 · paragraphs: 2,252 · characters: 1,296,309. Hapax legomena make up 79.5% of all forms — a measure of the novel's extreme lexical diversity.

Coinages / portmanteaux words outside the dictionary

30,498 distinct forms outside the dictionary (52.8% of all forms), 32,755 occurrences (14.9% of the text).

Thunderwords hundred-letter thunderclaps

Joyce's ten long words of the fall. Detected as letter runs ≥ 30 characters (after merging line-break hyphens):

1. klikkaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrottygraddaghsemmihsammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot 100 letters
2. Lukkedoerendunandurraskewdylooshoofermoyportertooryzooysphalnabortansporthaokansakroidverjkapakkapuk 100 letters
3. Bothallchoractorschumminaroundgansumuminarumdrumstrumtruminahumptadumpwaultopoofoolooderamaunsturnup 100 letters
4. husstenhasstencaffincoffintussemtossemdamandamnacosaghcusaghhobixhatouxpeswchbechoscashlcarcarcaract 100 letters
5. bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur 97 letters
6. Pappappapparrassannuaragheallachnatullaghmonganmacmacmacwhackfalltherdebblenonthedubblandadd 92 letters
7. Thingcrooklyexineverypasturesixdixlikencehimaroundhersthemaggerbykinkinkankanwithdownmind 89 letters
8. Ullhodturdenweirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolnirfenrirlukkilokkibaugimandodrrerin 75 letters
9. Bladyughfoulmoecklenburgwhurawhorascortastrumpapornanennykocksapastippata 73 letters
10. Perkodhuskurunbarggruauyagokgorlayorgromgremmitghundhurth 57 letters
11. lewdningbluebolteredallucktruckalltraumconductor 48 letters
12. rumathunaradidillifaititillibumullunukkunun 43 letters

Most frequent content words function words excluded

Ranked after filtering ~160 function words (the, and, of…), which by definition dominate any English text — their distribution shows in the Zipf plot below.

Zipf distribution frequency vs rank (log-log)

Leitmotifs

Longest words

By Book