Nonce words are neologisms, meaning they are new words that have yet to be accepted into mainstream use. The word comes from the Middle English phrase “for the once,” or for the moment/special occasion. It’s created for a specific purpose that must be inferred from the context and will likely never be encountered by the reader in any other context again.
Nonce pronunciation: Naw-nss Wer-d
Explore Nonce Word
- 1 Definition and Explanation
- 2 Why Do Writers Use Nonce Words?
- 3 Examples of Nonce Words in Poetry
- 4 Examples of Nonce Words in Literature
- 5 Nonce Word Synonyms
- 6 Related Literary Terms
- 7 Other Resources
Definition and Explanation
Nonce words are made-up words that authors coin for a specific purpose in their writing. They are sometimes used comedically, as within children’s poetry and fiction, while other ties they might be meant entirely seriously, such as in science fiction or fantasy novel. These words might stay contained to the stories they originated in, or, if the short story/novel/poem becomes popular, enter into the mainstream. For instance, Shakespeare created numerous words that were once neologisms and have since entered into common use. These include “cold-blood” and “amazement.”
Why Do Writers Use Nonce Words?
Writers use nonce words when they need a new word to describe something in their writing. This might be because they can’t settle on a word that already exists or because nothing means exactly what they want it to. Nonce words are also used to entertain, such as in the words of Dr. Seuss. He often created new words that rhymed with common words; this added vividness to the worlds he described while also making the reader feel more like they’d been transported there. Sometimes, nonce words are used for the sounds they create, such as in Jabberwocky.’ The words in this particular poem are a pleasure to read and hear but have no clear meaning. It’s possible to infer the meaning of some, but not all of them.
Examples of Nonce Words in Poetry
Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
‘Jabberwocky’ is perhaps the best-known English-language poem to make sure to nonce words. Here are a few lines from the poem as an example:
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
At first glance, it looks as though the poem is written in an entirely different language, which almost is considering how many nonce words Carroll employed. As mentioned above, it’s possible to infer meaning for some of these words, while for others, it’s almost impossible to get a complete picture. Some words from this poem, like “chortle” and “galumph,” have entered into common use.
The Owl and the Pussy-Cat by Edward Lear
Lear is one of the best-loved authors of children’s poetry to ever live. In his poem, ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat,’ readers can find a few examples of nonce words. Take a look at these lines and the word “runcible,”
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
Here, Lear coins the word “runcible” in order to refer to something that’s between a fork and a spoon, usually referred to as a “spork” nowadays. The word fits so seamlessly into the poem and sounds very much like a real word that it works quite well here.
Don’t Bump the Glump by Shel Silverstein
Don’t Bump the Glump is Silverstein’s first book of poems. In it, readers can find numerous poems based on nonsense words. For example, take a look at these lines from The Wild Cherote.’
I’d like a coat of Wild Cherote.
It’s warm and fleecy as can be.
But note: What if the Wild Cherote
Would like a coat of Me?
Here, Silverstein creates a character called a “Wild Cherote.” The only information one has, aside from illustrations, is that it’s possible to create a coat out of its hair, wool, or whatever other furry texture it has. Other wonderful poems in the collection include The Bibley,’ ‘Oops,’ and ‘The Skinny Zippity.’
Examples of Nonce Words in Literature
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
In Heinlein’s groundbreaking, best-selling science fiction novel, he coined a well-used nonce word— “grok.” The word is used throughout the novel to mean something close to “comprehend” or “understand.” It comes from Mars, where the main character, a human raised by Martians, learned to use it all the time. When he returns to earth, he uses “grok” on a regular basis, forcing all the other characters and the reader to intuit his meaning. By the end of the novel, it’s quite clear, and all the characters who have befriended him are using it regularly as well. Today, the word is used by some computer programmers.
Ulysses by James Joyce
Within Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, readers can find a number of invented words. These include “ringroundabout,” used to describe completely surrounding something, “poppysmic,” the sound of someone smacking their lips, and “mrkgnao,”a version of “meow.” Here is an example of the latter being used in the novel:
Mrkgnao! the cat said loudly. She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth.
In this excerpt, readers should also notice the use of “shameclosing” and “milkwhite,” two invented compound words, another type of nonce word.
Nonce Word Synonyms
Occasionalism, nonsense word, protologism, sniglet, pseudoword, nonce compound.
- Abstract Diction: occurs when the poet wants to express something ephemeral or ungraspable.
- Allusion: an indirect reference to, including but not limited to, an idea, event, or person. It is used within both prose and verse writing.
- Audience: the group for which an artist or writer makes a piece of art or writes.
- Figurative Language: figures of speech that are used in order to improve a piece of writing.
- Imagery: the elements of a poem that engage a reader’s senses. These are the important sights, sounds, feelings, and smells.
Other Resources
- Watch: What’s a Nonce Word?
- Listen: Ulysses by James Joyce Audiobook
- Read: Merriam-Webster Definition: Nonce Word
- Watch: Neologism
The titilifarious (also spelled tattyfilarious) British comedian Ken Dodd (c. 1970).
The Graham Stark Photographic Library/Getty Images
Updated on February 12, 2020
A nonce word (from Middle English «for the once») is a word coined or used for a special occasion. A compound construction made up for a particular occasion is sometimes called a nonce compound. As Thomas Kane notes below, nonce compounds (e.g., «an anti-everything-wrong organization») are usually hyphenated.
Examples and Observations
- «A nonce word is one coined ‘for the nonce’—made up for one occasion and not likely to be encountered again. When Lewis Carroll coined it, frabjous was a nonce word. Neologisms are much the same thing, brand-new words or brand-new meanings for existing words, coined for a specific purpose. Analogy, especially with familiar words or parts of speech, often guides the coiner, and occasionally these words will enter the standard vocabulary.» (Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Columbia University Press, 1993)
- «Sometimes ‘nonce-formation’ is restricted to linguistically irrelevant, quirky stylistic ‘novelties’; sometimes it is seen as fully representative of the system of word-formation defining ‘possible words.'» (Pavol Štekauer and Rochelle Lieber, Handbook of Word-Formation. Springer, 2005)
Comic Portmanteau Words
- «Ken Dodd, a very popular comedian from Liverpool, specialized in the use of words such as titilifarious (a blend of ‘titillating’ and ‘hilarious’?) and plumtuous (a blend of ‘plump’ and ‘sumptuous’?). Such usage may be intended to satirize the ‘long words’ of pompous sounding ‘gobbledygook.'» (Richard Alexander, Aspects of Verbal Humour in English. Gunter Narr Verlag, 1997)
- Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious
Mr. Dawes: Well, do you have anything to say, Banks?
George Banks: Well, sir, they do say that when there’s nothing to say, all you can say . . .
Mr. Dawes: Confound it, Banks! I said, do you have anything to say?
George Banks: Just one word, sir . . .
Mr. Dawes: Yes?
George Banks: Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious!
Mr. Dawes Sr.: What?
George Banks: Supercallifragilisticexpialidocious! Mary Poppins was right, it’s extraordinary!
(Dick Van Dyke and David Tomlinson in Mary Poppins, 1964) - «Vegan, too, has its offshoot: a freegan is an anticonsumerist who eats only what others throw away. Unlike a dumpster diver, a freegan (hard g) limits his scrounging to edibles. I believe this term is too close to euphemisms for copulation to be more than a nonce word.» (William Safire, «Vegan.» The New York Times, Jan. 30, 2005)
Horace Walpole’s Nonce Words
- «English bristles with nonce words—words invented on the spur of the moment, meant to be used only once. Horace Walpole—the author of the first Gothic novel, and one of the 18th century’s most dedicated letter-writers—was fond of coining new words when the mood struck him. He didn’t invent the insult nincompoop, but he does get credit for the derived form nincompoophood, a word that could stand to be reintroduced. When he wanted to refer to ‘greenness’ and ‘blueness,’ he made up greenth and blueth. When he wanted a word meaning ‘intermediatness,’ he coined betweenity. And while most of these disappeared as quickly as they were invented, a few of his coinages have stuck: Walpole was fond of a fairy tale about three princes from Sri Linka, once known as Serendip, who made a series of unexpected discoveries, so he made up a word to describe the phenomenon. More than two centuries later we still use serendipity for lucky chances.» (Jack W. Lynch, The Lexicographer’s Dilemma. Walker, 2009)
Nonce Compounds
- «[P]robably most neologisms are novel compound words. Barbara Tuchman describes the most remarkable quality of a particular statesman as his ‘you-be-damnedness’; and a traveler in Sicily complains of the crude duckboards placed for tourists around an excavation of beautiful mosaics:
It was a groan-making thing to do and only an archeologist could have thought of it. (Lawrence Durrell)
Such constructions are called nonce compounds, which are distinct from the conventional compounds we all use, like teenager or schoolboy. Nonce compounds are usually hyphenated.» (Thomas S. Kane, The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing. Berkley Books, 2000) - «I doubt whether even the breathless, gosh-gee-whiz-can-all-this-be-happening-to-me TV-celebrity-author himself could cap this shlock classic with another.» (Pauline Kael, The New Yorker, 1970)
- «The success of a regularly produced nonce compound depends on its conceptual appeal to the speech community and on the importance of the object designated by the compound.» (Florian Coulmas, «Underdeterminacy and Plausibility in Word-Formation.» Meaning, Use, and Interpretation of Language, ed. by Rainer Bäuerle et al. Walter de Gruyer, 1983)
For other uses of the word, see Nonce.
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 formerly a nonce word in English, appearing only in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Murray Gell-Mann then adopted 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 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., Bananaphone). If the need recurs (or the joke is widely enjoyed), nonce words easily enter regular use just because their meaning is obvious.
Alternatively, nonce words can be logatomes. These are nonsense words that nevertheless obey the phonotactics of a language, that «sound like» native words. Many examples are found in nonsense verse, such as “Jabberwocky”. Nonce words may also disobey the phonotactics, such as fnord (fn- does not occur in modern English), or be barely pronounceable or unpronounceable nonsense, such as kwyjibo.
Nonce words are often created as part of pop culture and advertising campaigns. A poem by Seamus Heaney entitled «Nonce Words» is included in his collection «District and Circle».
Nonce words are often used to study the development of language in children because they allow researchers to test how children treat words for which they have no prior knowledge. This permits inferences about the default assumptions children make about new word meanings, syntactic structure, etc. Frequently used nonce words include «wug», «blicket», and «dax». Wug is among the earliest known nonce words used in language learning studies, and is best known for its use in Jean Berko’s «Wug test», in which children were presented with a novel object, called a wug, and then shown multiple instances of the object and asked to complete a sentence that elicits a plural form—e.g., «This is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two…?» The use of the plural form «wugs» by the child suggests that they have applied a plural rule to the form, and that this knowledge is not specific to prior experience with the word, but applies to all nouns, whether familiar or novel.
Examples of nonce words previously used in child developmental studies include:
| Nonce words |
|---|
| wug |
| blicket |
| dax |
| toma |
| pimwit |
| zav |
| speff |
| tulver |
| gazzer |
| fem |
| fendle |
| tupa |
Other examples of nonce words include:
- Runcible, from Edward Lear, which later came to describe a curved fork with a cutting edge.
- Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, from the movie musical Mary Poppins.
- Fnord, from the book Principia Discordia
See also
- Logatome
- Sniglet
- Placeholder name
- Hapax legomenon
References
- Young Children Learn To Produce Passives with Nonce Verbs
- From clusters to words: grammatical models of nonce-word acceptability
- On Words and Upwards! — A collection of humorous nonce words.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A nonce word (also called an occasionalism) is a lexeme created for a single occasion to solve an immediate problem of communication.[1][2]: 132
Some nonce words may acquire a fixed meaning inferred from context and use, possibly even becoming an established part of the language, at which point they stop being nonce words. Some nonce words may be essentially meaningless and disposable, but they are useful for exactly that reason—the words «wug» and «blicket» for instance were invented by researchers to be used in exercises in child language testing.[3]
Lexicology[edit]
The term is used because such a word is created «for the nonce» (i.e., for the time being, or this once).[2]: 455 All nonce words are also neologisms, that is, recent or relatively new words that have not been fully accepted into mainstream or common use.[4] The term nonce word in this sense is due to James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.[5]:25
In child development studies[edit]
Nonce words are sometimes used to study the development of language in children because they allow researchers to test how children treat words of which they have no prior knowledge. This permits inferences about the default assumptions children make about new word meanings, syntactic structure, etc. «Wug» is among the earliest known nonce words used in language learning studies, and is best known for its use in Jean Berko’s «Wug test», in which children were presented with a novel object, called a wug, and then shown multiple instances of the object and asked to complete a sentence that elicits a plural form—e.g., «This is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two…?» The use of the plural form «wugs» by the children suggests that they have applied a plural rule to the form, and that this knowledge is not specific to prior experience with the word but applies to most English nouns, whether familiar or novel.[6]
Nancy N. Soja, Susan Carey, and Elizabeth Spelke used the nonce words «blicket,» «stad,» «mell,» «coodle,» «doff,» «tannin,» «fitch,» and «tulver» when testing to see if children’s knowledge of the distinction between non-solid substances and solid objects preceded or followed their knowledge of the distinction between mass nouns and count nouns.[7]
In literature[edit]
A poem by Seamus Heaney entitled «Nonce Words» is included in his collection District and Circle.[8] Fluddle was reported by David Crystal, which he understood to mean a water spillage between a puddle and a flood, invented by the speaker because no suitable word existed. Crystal speculated in 1995 that it might enter the English language if it proved popular.[2] Bouba and kiki is used to demonstrate a connection between the sound of words and their meaning. Grok, coined by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land, is now used by many to mean «deeply and intuitively understand».[9] The poem «Jabberwocky» is full of nonce words, with two of them, chortle and galumph, entering into common use.[9] The novel Finnegans Wake used quark as a nonce word; the physicist Murray Gell-Mann adopted it as the name of a subatomic particle.[10]
See also[edit]
- Foobar
- Glokaya kuzdra
- Hapax legomenon
- Metasyntactic variable
- Nonsense word
- Placeholder name
- Protologism
- Pseudoword
- Sniglet
References[edit]
- ^ «Nonce Word». Cambridge Dictionaries Online. 2011. Retrieved 6 November 2012.
- ^ a b c The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language. Ed. David Crystal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0521401798
- ^ Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2001, p. 388
- ^ Malmkjaer, Kirsten. (Ed.) (2006) The Linguistics Encyclopedia. eBook edition. London & New York: Routledge, p. 601. ISBN 0-203-43286-X
- ^ Mattiello, Elisa. (2017). Analogy in Word-formation : a Study of English Neologisms and Occasionalisms. Berlin/Boston, GERMANY: De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 978-3-11-055141-9. OCLC 988760787.
- ^ Lise Menn; Nan Bernstein Ratner (2000). «In the Beginning Was the Wug». In Lise Menn; Nan Bernstein Ratner (eds.). Methods for Studying Language Production. Lawrence Erlbaum associates. pp. 1–26. ISBN 978-0-8058-3033-0.
- ^ Ontological categories guide young children’s inductions of word meaning: Object terms and substance terms. Cognition, 38(2), 179-211. [1]
- ^ Heaney, Seamus (2006). District and Circle. Faber and Faber. no. 28. ISBN 0-571-23097-0.
- ^ a b «OED online». Oxford University Press. Retrieved 17 August 2022.
- ^ Gell-Mann, Murray (1995). The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex. Henry Holt and Co. p. 180. ISBN 978-0-8050-7253-2.
Nonce
words as part of linguistic and cultural worldview
-
Neologisms
vs. nonce-words -
Functions
of nonce words -
Types
of nonce words -
Nonce
words as part of the author’s message.
—
Neologisms
(N)- new words, word-combinations or fixed phrases ; new meanings of
existing words (“mouse”). Some neologisms are
non-motivated(quark).
James
Joyce’s
Finnegan’s
Wake.
Murray
Gell-Mann
then adopted it to name a new class of subatomic
particle.
—
Nonce
words
(NW)
-new words made up by writers and publicists for a special literary
effect. They are rarely adopted into common language. (“I won’t
be sonatoed
out of my own house”)
‘floodle‘
— a stretch of water bigger than a puddle but smaller than a flood.
NW
can
give
rise
to
neologisms.
окказионализмы
(от лат. occasio — “случай”= “писательские
(художественные) новообразования”,
“творческие (стилистические,
индивидуальные) неологизмы”,
“слова-самоделки”, “слова-однодневки”,
“эгологизмы”
NW
& N compared
(O.I.
Alexandrova):
N
–
lexical units emerging as NOMINATIVE
(= IDENTIFYING),
with an intellectual-communicative
function.
NW
–
units emerging as CHARACTERIZING
(PREDICATIVE).
Nonce-words
are characterized by an interplay of explicit and implicit meanings
(“мерцательность”
эксплицитного*
/ имплицитного*)
Reasons
for coining nonce-words:
-
to express
the thought more precisely than can be done with the common stock of
vocabulary (“touch-me-not-ishness”
– having a ‘touch-me-not’ character; -
to
find for a compressed form of meaning (“to be sonatoed
…”, “guesstimate”, galumphing) -
to express
one’s emotional attitude or assessment of an object or person
(“floodle”,”twi-thought” – an indistinct or vague
thought); -
to foreground
the lexical unit, i.e. to draw attention to it, to “re-design”
its etymology and meaning («искпедиция»
or: such never-existing breed of cats as «кошакса»,
«съембернар»,
«невмастифф»)
Э.
Ханпира:
NW exist not only on on the level of a word but on that of a^
-
morpheme
(“silences”
“Все каменней
ступени” ,
(Брюсов); -
a
word
combination (two wives
ago”,
“an extremely
married
man”; “weaponed ladyhood”, «он
очень
причесывается»).
Я
изучил
науку
расставанья//
В
простоволосых
жалобах
ночных.(Мандельштам) -
Not
only can lexical combinability be violated, but syntactical,
too: “Today we shall learn to
vanish mice”.
“Иду,
и
холодеют
росы
и
серебрятся
о
тебе”).
Types
of contexts in which NW occur:
Zero
context
– a context which is superfluous (unnecessary), as the NW reveals
its semantic potential through its inner form.
Minicontext
(= immediate environment)–
a line, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph sufficient for revealing
the semantics of a NW: «кошакса»
— the only breed of cat that can rub itself against the leg of its
master simultaneously from the front and from behind ( a long cat:
кошка+такса)
Macrocontext
(the whole work of fiction) – “a
rich full death”
as a nonce-cliché )
Vertical
context
(historical—cultural)
(“пушкинское
предикативное наречие кюхельбекерно,
употребленное в строке “и кюхельбекерно,
и тошно”, не может быть истолковано,
если читатель не владеет затекстовой
информацией о меланхоличности,
мнительности натуры друга Пушкина”.
– Н.Бабенко.
Окказиональное в художественном тексте)
Nonce-words
are often related
to allusions:
Орел
// кордильерствует
над
вершинами… (С.Кирсанов)
И, леонардоввинчиваясь
в небо, //Достичь сверхмикеланджеловой
мощи (Л.
Мартынов
“Натура живописца»)
J.Fowles.
“The Collector”: «Calibanity»,
“Calibanese”.
Calibanity
stands
for mediocricy, distrust of everything original, narrow-mindedness,
suspiciousness, the herd instinct (стадный…)
He
said
he’d
think
about
it.
Which
is
Calibanese
for
«no.”»
In
this context the NW «Calibanity»
comes close to the meaning of another NW, from another book of the
same writer: «mass-everything».
(J.Fowles.
The Magician.
– from graduation paper of Е.Муравьева):
«…this
awful
deadweight
of
the
fat
little
New
People
on
everything.
Corrupting
everything. Vulgarizing everything. Raping the countryside.
Everything mass-produced.
Mass—everything».
Е.В.Поздеева (Пермь) (Об
эссе М.Гершуни «Грезиденты»)
вредители-грошмейстеры
заведут свою пустораль,
двинут свои эйфоризмы
…И снова у
думовладельцев
пойдут
беспробудни
…(«безванные,
бездушные
плачуги…
— about terrible living conditions)
(BK – the
stagnation period of Brezhnev’s times, the tedious and
never-ceasing propaganda, the gap between the privileged and the
common people, with their pitiful living conditions)
From a
modern fantasy novel: «ОККУЛЬТОВАРЫ»
5
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