A nonce word is a word used only "for the nonce"—on a particular occasion 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 the Oxford English Dictionary. Compare "hapax legomenon". An example of a nonce word in the works of Shakespeare is "honorificabilitudinitatibus".
Read more about Nonce Word: Creation and Use, Use in Child Development Studies, Other Examples
Famous quotes containing the word word:
“The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)