linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, a nonce word—also called an occasionalism—is any word (

lexeme A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms ta ...

), or any sequence of sounds or letters, created for a single occasion or utterance but not otherwise understood or recognized as a word in a given language.''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language''. Ed.

David Crystal David Crystal, (born 6 July 1941) is a British linguist who works on the linguistics of the English language. Crystal studied English at University College London and has lectured at Bangor University and the University of Reading. He was aw ...

. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press was the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted a letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it was the oldest university press in the world. Cambridge University Press merged with Cambridge Assessme ...

, 1995, p. 132. Nonce words have a variety of functions and are most commonly used for humor, poetry, children's literature, linguistic experiments, psychological studies, and medical diagnoses, or they arise by accident. Some nonce words have a meaning at their inception or gradually acquire a fixed meaning inferred from context and use, but if they eventually become an established part of the language (

neologisms In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

), they stop being nonce words.Crystal, David. (1997) ''A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics'' (4th Edition). Oxford and Cambridge (Mass., USA): Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Other nonce words may be essentially meaningless and disposable (nonsense words), but they are useful for exactly that reason—the words '' wug'' and ''blicket'' for instance were invented by researchers to be used in child language testing. Nonsense words often share orthographic and

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

similarity with (meaningful) words, as is the case with

pseudoword A pseudoword is a unit of speech or text that appears to be an actual word in a certain language, while in fact it has no meaning. It is a specific type of nonce word, or even more narrowly a nonsense word, composed of a combination of phonemes whi ...

s, which make no sense but can still be pronounced in accordance with a language's phonotactic rules. Such invented words are used by psychology and linguistics researchers and educators as tools to assess a learner's phonetic decoding ability, and the ability to infer the (hypothetical) meaning of a nonsense word from context is used to test for

brain damage Brain injury (BI) is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors. In general, brain damage refers to significant, undiscriminating trauma-induced damage. A common ...

Proper names A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa''; ''Jupiter''; ''Sarah (given name), Sarah''; ''Walmart'') as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a Class (philoso ...

of real or fictional entities sometimes originate as nonce words. The term is used because such a word is created " for the nonce" (i.e., for the time being, or this once), coming from James Murray, editor of the ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...

.'' Some analyses consider nonce words to fall broadly under

neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

s, which are usually defined as words relatively recently accepted into a language's vocabulary; other analyses do not.

Types of nonce words

A variety of more specific concepts used by scholars falls under the umbrella of ''nonce words'', of which overlap is also sometimes possible: *nonsense word: a nonce word that is meaningless **nonword: a nonsense word that is not even pronounceable in a particular language **

: a nonsense word that still follows the

phonotactics Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek 'voice, sound' and 'having to do with arranging') is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...

of a particular language and is therefore pronounceable, feeling to native speakers like a possible word (for example, in English, ''blurk'' is a pseudoword, but ''bldzkg'' is a nonword); thus, pseudowords follow a language's phonetic rules but have no meaning *

ghost word In folklore, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from an invisible presence to translucen ...

: a nonce word authoritatively described in a

reference work A reference work is a document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...

that turns out to have originated from a

typo A typographical error (often shortened to typo), also called a misprint, is a mistake (such as a spelling or transposition error) made in the typing of printed or electronic material. Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual typesetting ...

or other simple error *

protologism In linguistics, a protologism is a newly used or coined word, a nonce word, that has been repeated but has not gained acceptance beyond its original users or been published independently of the coiners. The word may be proposed, may be extremely ...

: a nonce word that has achieved repeated usage, perhaps even by a small group but not beyond that (an intermediate step towards a

) *stunt word: a nonce word intentionally coined to demonstrate the creator's cleverness or elicit an emotional reaction, such as admiration or laughter; such words are often noted in the works of

Dr. Seuss Theodor Seuss Geisel ( ;"Seuss"
''

Similar or related concepts

Many types of other words can also be meaningful nonce words, as is true of most

sniglet A sniglet () is an often humorous word made up to describe something for which no dictionary word exists. Introduced in the 1980s TV comedy series '' Not Necessarily the News'', sniglets were generated and published in significant numbers, along wi ...

s (words, often stunt words, explicitly coined in the absence of any relevant dictionary word). Other types of misinterpretations or humorous re-wordings can also be nonce words, as may occur in

word play Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, ph ...

, such as certain examples of

puns A pun, also known as a paronomasia in the context of linguistics, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from t ...

spoonerisms A spoonerism is an occurrence of speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words of a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and priest William Archibald Spooner, who reporte ...

malapropism A malapropism (; also called a malaprop, acyrologia or Dogberryism) is the incorrect use of a word in place of a word with a similar sound, either unintentionally or for comedic effect, resulting in a nonsensical, often humorous utterance. An exam ...

s, etc. Furthermore, meaningless nonce words can occur unintentionally or spontaneously, for instance through

error An error (from the Latin , meaning 'to wander'Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “error (n.), Etymology,” September 2023, .) is an inaccurate or incorrect action, thought, or judgement. In statistics, "error" refers to the difference between t ...

s (

typographical Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line spacing, letter spac ...

or otherwise) or through

keysmash A keysmash (alternatively key smash, key mash or keyboard smash) is internet slang for the typing out of a random sequence of letters on a computer keyboard or touchscreen, often to express intense emotion. Gaining popularity since 2019, the term ...

es.

In child development studies

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. Nancy N. Soja,

Susan Carey Susan E. Carey (born 1942) is an American psychologist who is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. She studies language acquisition, children's development of concepts, conceptual changes over time, and the importance of executive fun ...

, and

Elizabeth Spelke Elizabeth Shilin Spelke FBA (born May 28, 1949) is an American cognitive psychologist at the Department of Psychology of Harvard University and director of the Laboratory for Developmental Studies. Starting in the 1980s, she carried out experim ...

used "blicket", "stad", "mell", "coodle", "doff", "tannin", "fitch", and "tulver" as nonce words 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 noun In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, non-count noun, uncount noun, or just uncountable, is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete eleme ...

s and

count noun In linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun that can be modified by a quantity and that occurs in both singular and plural forms, and that can co-occur with quantificational determiners like ''every'', ''each'', ''several'', e ...

In literature

A poem by

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...

titled "Nonce Words" is included in his collection ''

District and Circle ''District and Circle'' is a poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. It was published in 2006 and won the 2006 T. S. Eliot Prize, the most prestigious poetry award in the UK. The collection also won ...

''.

reported ''fluddle'', 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. ''Bouba'' and ''kiki'' are used to demonstrate a connection between the sound of a word and its meaning. ''

Grok ''Grok'' () is a neologism coined by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel '' Stranger in a Strange Land''. While the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' summarizes the meaning of ''grok'' as "to understand intuit ...

'', coined by

Robert Heinlein Robert Anson Heinlein ( ; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific acc ...

in '' Stranger in a Strange Land'', is now used by many to mean "deeply and intuitively understand". The poem "

Jabberwocky "Jabberwocky" is a Nonsense verse, nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel ''Through the Looking-Glass'', the sequel to ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' ...

" is full of nonce words, of which two, ''

chortle Chortle is a British comedy website launched in 2000 by Steve Bennett. The site is a major source of comedy news in the UK. It also reviews comedy shows nationwide, including extensively at the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and presents the C ...

'' and '' galumph'', have entered into common use. The novel ''

Finnegans Wake ''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It was published in instalments starting in 1924, under the title "fragments from ''Work in Progress''". The final title was only revealed when the book was publishe ...

'' used ''quark'' ("three quarks for Muster Mark") as a nonce word; the physicist

Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American theoretical physicist who played a preeminent role in the development of the theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as the funda ...

adopted it as the name of a

subatomic particle In physics, a subatomic particle is a particle smaller than an atom. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be either a composite particle, which is composed of other particles (for example, a baryon, lik ...

References

{{reflist Types of words Word coinage

Types of nonce words

In child development studies

In literature

See also

Examples of nonce-word articles

References