Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft
Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft is a compound word that serves as an example of the virtually unlimited compounding of nouns that is possible in many Germanic languages. According to the 1996 "Guinness Book of World Records", it is the longest word published in the German language.
Erika Fuchs
She also used verbs shortened to their stems not only to imitate sounds (onomatopoeia), such as "schluck", "stöhn", "knarr", "klimper" (gulp, groan, creak, chink/jingle), but also to represent soundless events: "grübel", "staun", "zitter" (ponder, goggle, tremble). The word for these soundwords in German is now an "Erikativ", a tongue-in-cheek word utilizing Fuchs's first name, made to resemble grammatical terms such as "Infinitiv" (infinitive), "Indikativ" (indicative mood), "Akkusativ" (accusative case), etc. "Erikative" are commonly used in Internet forums and chatrooms to describe what people are doing as they write, which has become the common German form of the Internet slang behavior known in English as emoting. English examples: *ducks*, *runs away*, etc. The "Erikativ" is the German form of those ("*duck*", "*weglauf*", respectively).