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 a nonce word appearing only in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake until Murray Gell-Mann used 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 not a non-word: although it would not be found in any dictionary, it is instantly comprehensible. If the need recurs (or the joke is widely enjoyed), nonce-words easily enter regular use (initially as neologisms) just because their meaning is obvious.

Examples

• clopen set, in topology, refers to sets which are both open and closed.
• cromulent - valid, legitimate, and apt, used in an episode of The Simpsons.
• slithy - a portmanteau of "slimy" and "lithe"; used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky.
• unidexter - a one-legged person. Coined by comedian Peter Cook in One Leg Too Few.
• aqueosalinocalcalinoetaceoaluminumosecupreovitriolic, one of the English language's longest words according to the book The Dictionary, was used once in describing a particular British aquarium's water.
• surlecutant in French, meaning that gets you to sit down in a rather vulgar manner

See also

• hapax legomenon