Most people don't know there are 1,909 letters in the longest word of the English language. It doesn't appear in all dictionaries but the word, which begins with methionylglutaminy, is a term for the formulaC1289H2051N343O375S8, an enzyme that contains 267 Amino acids

Now third-grade students in the 14 elementary schools in Adams County School District 50 and third grade students in the 11 elementary schools in the Mapleton School District will be able to look the word up on page 524 of their own "A Student's Dictionary" given to them as a gift from the Westminster 7:10 Rotary Club.As one student said, "I am going to try to read that long word and if I do I will get back to you on that." And another student told us she was going to read her dictionary for 60 minutes a day.

The dictionaries are produced by The Dictionary Project, Inc. in South Carolina, an organization created to provide a dictionary to students to help with their homework and their schoolwork. Throughout the United States over 5 million dictionaries have been provided by the Dictionary Project at a nominal cost and have been distributed by Rotary clubs and other organizations.

Over 1,200 new dictionaries, each personalized with the student's name, were presented to the third-grade students by Rotarians during the last weeks in December and the first weeks in January.The dictionaries contain resource materials above and beyond just words. Included are weights and measures, The Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, maps of the world, facts about countries, information about the 50 U.S. states, biographies of the 43 U.S. presidents and facts about the eight planets in the solar system.

The Westminster 7:10 Rotary club first gave dictionaries to third graders in Westminster Hills Elementary School. Last year the club gave over 800 dictionaries to third graders in District 50 and now hopes to be able to give dictionaries to many more third graders every year.