nonce word
phrase

- a word coined and used apparently to suit one particular occasion


- any word or expression coined for or used on one occasion


- a word created for a single event or context and not expected to enter general use

Britannica, Wikipedia, Mental Floss

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PHRASE ORIGIN

The etymology of “nonce word” traces back to the phrase for the nonce, meaning “for the once” or “for a special occasion.”

This developed from Middle English for þe naness, which itself was a rebracketing (misdivision) of for þan anes meaning “for the one occasion”.

The expression “nonce word” first appeared in 1884 to describe a word made for a particular moment, not intended for repeated use, comparable to the French “mot d’occasion”. Thus, a “nonce word” is coined for temporary, one-time usage

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WORDS FOR THIS MOMENT

Nonce words happen when we reach for a word that doesn’t exist,… so we make one up to describe something we can feel, see, or sense, but can’t put a name to.

Children do it constantly—glimmerbug, wibble-wobble, fizzletop, twinkle-squeak, yummle, squibble, blinky-boo,…

Writers use nonce words to pin down feelings in a direct way. James Joyce created “moocowish, helterkeltering, scrotumtightening”.

Nonce words usually appear, do their job, and disappear, but sometimes, these one-off inventions find a home in everyday speech and becomes the word we didn’t know we were missing:

- Binge-watch – once a casual invention; now firmly established (2013)

- Blog (from “weblog”) – originally a playful contraction (1999)

- Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) – a no-win situation (1961)

- Chortle (Lewis Carroll) – to chuckle in delight (1871)

- Cyberspace (William Gibson) – invented in his novel “Neuromancer” (1984)

- Grok (Robert Heinlein) – to understand deeply (1961), now Elon Musk’s AI (2023)

- Hangry – playful blend that became widely accepted (2012)

- Meme (Richard Dawkins) – once scholarly jargon (1976), now mainstream

- Nerd (Dr. Seuss) – invented in “If I Ran the Zoo” (1950)

- Quark (James Joyce) → adopted by physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1964)

- Robot (Karel Čapek) – introduced in his play R.U.R. (1921)

- Selfie – first recorded as an informal one-off in an Australian forum (2002)

- Serendipity (Horace Walpole) – coined in a 1754 letter (1754)

- Snark (Lewis Carroll) – originally a nonsense creature. Now “snarky” = critical, mocking (1874)

- Spam (Monty Python) – later adopted for junk email (1970 / 1980s for email)

- Username (early computing jargon) – once a local coinage (1960s)

These all began as one-off inventions before entering everyday English.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

ad hoc word, bespoke bit of language, coinage, ephemeral expression, extemporaneous wording, hapax legomenon, idiolectal creation, improvised idiom, invented lexical item, invented word, knee-jerk nomenclature, made-up word, makeshift moniker, momentary coinage, neologism, NONCE WORDS, occasionalism, one-off (off the cuff) coinage, one-off locution, on the fly phrase, spontaneous term, spur-of-moment word (phrase), temporary neologism, throwaway term.

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SMUGGLE
 OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“Linguists study NONCE WORDS to understand how people create language on the fly.”

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P L E A S E   S U P P O R T   O W A D