Word of the Day

: January 24, 2007

nonce

adjective NAHNTS

What It Means

: occurring, used, or made only once or for a special occasion

nonce in Context

Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" is chock-full of nonce words, but a few of his coinages, such as "chortle" and "galumph," have become established in our language.

Did You Know?

"Nonce" first appeared in Middle English as a noun spelled "nanes." The spelling likely came about from a misdivision of the phrase "then anes." ("Then" was the Middle English equivalent of "the" and "anes" meant "one purpose.") The word was especially used in the phrase "for the nonce," meaning "for the one purpose," as in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Prologue" of Canterbury Tales: "A cook they hadde with hem for the nones To boille the chiknes with the marybones." The adjective "nonce" did not exist in print until the publication in 1884 of the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (which later became the Oxford English Dictionary). The editor of that dictionary, James Murray, created the term "nonce-word" as a label for "words apparently employed for the nonce."