Torschlusspanik isn't long. You have seen nothing of what our beautiful language is truly capable of.

@Minix: You didn't see it, but I had a list of 10 words. But I changed it because I didn't want to seem to eager to mock German ;) Give me a better one and I will change it! My first idea was fingerspitzengefühl, it's the classic example of long winded German words with a complex meaning (here in Belgium).

@Flater Donau­dampfschiffahrts­elektrizitäten­hauptbetriebswerk­bauu‌​nterbeamten­gesell‌​sc‌​haft

@MrLister: The only reference on Google I could find was in a German.SE comment. Nowhere else do I see it mentioned, so I didn't have a translation. I picked another word from the same comment that did actually link to a Wiki page. Hope you're okay with that ;)

@MrLister: Nevermind, I found the word you referenced. No idea why Google came up empty. There's probably a spelling difference in there, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to compare the letters in those words ;)

@Flater Fingerspitzengefühl is great. While english is very flexible and it's easy to make a verb into a noun and the other way around, if you manage to find a word for a compicated concept in German its so neat and rewarding.

BTW, I never really understood that fascination about German compound words. I mean "compound word" is as much a compound word as "Fingerspitzengefühl" is, is it not? It's just written differently. For example, "hard disk" and "Festplatte" are literally made up of the same component words, just that one is written with a space and the other isn't. But both are made up of two words, both take on a new meaning that is different from just the simple combination of the constituent words, and "hard disk" is even an entry in a dictionary.

@Flater Sorry, apparently I pasted the word in here with the soft hyphens that were on the original site. I won't do it again.

@JörgWMittag: I think the main difference why English has started using space separation for compound words, is because English has a lot of pronunciation differences for similarly spelled words. (through/trough, read/read, lead/lead, ...) Comparatively speaking, most European languages do not have this pronunciation variation. I can vouch for Dutch, in most cases the spelling accurately reflects the pronunciation. German is a close sibling to Dutch, and the same is true (afaik). And if there's no pronunciation difference, it's less difficult to understand words that are joined together.

@JörgWMittag Indeed, I think it comes down to obsession with orthography since the dawn of printing. The definition of "word" is considered quite hazy in linguistics and putting the boundaries at spaces can easily be argued to be fairly arbitrary or not apply well at a cross-linguistic level. But as a result, we English speakers boggle at the idea that all that can be "one word"!

The "joke" part - English speakers (esp Americans) find this part of German to be humorous, by nature. To us, it seems like you are making a word out by combining the description of the word into one word. To us, "why would you make a word that is the description instead of just saying the description? Doesn't save any time or effort...." We think that something shorter and pithier makes more sense. "splorg" (made up) vs "researchingcitationstosupportmystackexchangeanswerssoIdontg‌​etflamedanddownvot‌​ed‌​" - one makes more sense to us, from our own perspective.

Don't forget the tale of Rhubarb Barbara (translation in the comments.)

If you want to write your own dialogue worthy of a scene in CSI, there's an app for that

@JörgWMittag I mean "compound word" is as much a compound word as "Fingerspitzengefühl" is, is it not? No. Justremovingspacesinasentencedoesnotmakesomethingacompundwor‌​dinenglish. Moreover, if "hard disk" and "harddisk" are identical, just written differently, what about "ha rddisk"? What about "Let's go over there to get her" versus "Let's go over there together"?

@PoloHoleSet: You mean like, "it is an armored fighting vehicle, but it looks like a tank on tracks, so let's call it 'tank', that's shorter" vs. "it is an armored fighting vehicle, so let's call it 'Panzerkampfwagen', or 'Panzer' when in a hurry"? ;-)

+1 for that CSI link... Makes me laugh every time!

I knew what that NCIS link was going to be before I clicked it.

@JörgWMittag Technically "compound word" is not a compound word. By default all languages create new meaning when combining words. It's called sentences and incomplete sentences like "compound word" is called a phrase. But english does actually have compound words like speedboat and aircraft and waterboard. And even long compound words like antidisestablishmentarianism but in english there is no specific set of rules for creating compound words like in japanese or inuit or latin or german. it's more ad-hoc (with limited rules for prefixes and postfixes) so english speakers are not used to it

@GendoIkari: What annoys me even more about that NCIS clip is that no one seems to discuss that Gibbs did not solve the problem by pulling the plug, he made it worse. Abby, given her skill level, should have all her files on a network share. By killing the computer, Gibbs did not deny the hacker access to the network share; but he did prevent Abby (and McGee) from trying to stop the hacker. But the show smugly revels in how it "outwits the geeks" by the old-fashioned pulling of the plug.