Nonce word
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A nonce word is a word used only "for the nonce"—to meet a need that is not expected to recur. Quark, for example, was a nonce word in English appearing only in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake until Murray Gell-Mann quoted it to name a new class of subatomic particle. The use of the term nonce word in this way was apparently the work of James Murray, the influential editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Nonce words frequently arise through the combination of an existing word with a familiar prefix or suffix, in order to meet a particular need (or as a joke). The result is a special kind of pseudoword: although it would not be found in any dictionary, it is instantly comprehensible (e.g., bananular phone). If the need recurs (or the joke is widely enjoyed), nonce words easily enter regular use (initially as neologisms) just because their meaning is obvious.

Nonce words are often created as part of pop culture and advertising campaigns.

Nonce words play a role in the language development of children.¹

Examples

• tattarrattat by James Joyce in Ulysses (1922)
• Slithy, as a portmanteau of "slimy" and "lithe"; chortle as a portmanteau of "chuckle" and "snort"; among several used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky.
• "Runcible spoon", from Edward Lear, which later came to describe a curved fork with a cutting edge.
• Unidexter - a one-legged person of the right-legged persuasion. Coined by comedian Peter Cook in One Leg Too Few.
• Aequeosalinocalcalinoceraceoaluminosocupreovitriolic, one of the English language's longest words according to the book The Dictionary, was used once in describing a particular British spa's water.
• Surlecultant in French, meaning that gets you to sit down in a rather vulgar manner. A rough translation would be 'onto-the-arse-ing'.
• Contrafibularatories was one of several nonce words used by the fictional Edmund Blackadder to confuse the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, whom Blackadder despised. Among the others were anaspeptic, phrasmotic, periconbobulations, interphrastically and extramuralization.
• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from the movie musical Mary Poppins.
• Vquex, used in a game of Scrabble in The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Aged 37¾ and claimed to mean a cross between a ferret and a giraffe.
• Querafancible in the works of Robert A. Heinlein, (some unspecified thing in a bathroom).
• Shpadoinkle in the Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie Cannibal! the Musical.
• Wakalixes, used by Richard Feynman in his essay Judging Books by Their Covers.
• Kwyjibo used in The Simpsons 'Bart the Genius' in a game of Scrabble, meaning "a bald, overweight, North American ape of below average intelligence".
• Trubicle used in the greater Lexington, Kentucky area, meaning "a windowless workplace area that is surrounded by artificial walls, with an opening on one side (as opposed to a door). This structure is then occupied by three co-workers, usually with similar job responsibilities".

See also

• Hapax legomenon
• Neologism
• Sniglet

References

1. ^ Young Children Learn To Produce Passives with Nonce Verbs

• From clusters to words: grammatical models of nonce-word acceptability

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