January 22, 1999

nonce word

As I understand it, a nonce word is one made up for a special occasion and intended to be used only once. If it is so used does it then become a "hapax legomenon"? What if it is used more than once?

The standard dictionary definition of a nonce word is 'a word coined and used only for a particular occasion'. As we have discussed, a hapax legomenon is a word or phrase found only once in some specified body of language (the entire records of a language, the works of a given author, etc.). While a word used only once would indeed be a hapax, the term nonce word has a different implication.

While a hapax legomenon is any word found only once, a nonce word is not just a word used only once, but one intended to be used only once--one coined for a particular effect and not likely to be repeated. As the language writer Tom McArthur notes, "Because of the special functions, ephemerality, and even eccentricity of such usages, it is not easy to exemplify them." One example, from Anthony Burgess: "The intermittent drone was finneganswaked by lightly sleeping Enderby into a parachronic lullaby chronicle" (Inside Mr Enderby, 1963). It is unlikely that anyone else has ever used, or will ever use, finneganswake as a verb in English.

Still, the issue of repeated use of "nonce" words is a real one. Any word sufficiently useful to be used once can probably be used again, as the situation arises. Typical sources of nonce words--highly topical references (as for a current event); puns (e.g. Billdungsroman, a story of the coming of age of Bill Clinton, used by N.Y. Times op-ed writer Maureen Dowd); unusual formations (as Burgess's verbing of finneganswake)--may all lead to words that get adopted by other writers. A personal favorite is the word Schadenfreudian, punning on Schadenfreude 'malicious pleasure felt at another's misfortune' and the word Freudian. This seems like a one-off, but has been picked up by a few writers because it's just so good.

The term nonce derives from a metanalysis of Middle English phrase such as for then anes 'for the one purpose'; the n moved over to create "for the nanes," insert your fave vowel shift, etc. The phrase nonce word itself was first used in 1884, during the preparation of the Oxford English Dictionary.