nonce word
- noun
- /nɑns wɜrd/
- Specialized
:
palabra de ocasión
- The classic Berko (1958) study involved a morpheme elicitation task with nonce words to see if American children aged 4;0-7;0 possessed morphological rules.
Examples
-
During the brainstorming session, she suggested a nonce word that perfectly captured the project's unique concept.
-
Although overall production of the syllabic plural on nonce words was poor, Berko (1958) did find that children could correctly produce the high-frequency familiar word "glasses."
Academic text (2013) -
That such a nonce word had become Mark's asinine catchphrase begged the very question to which it assumed the answer.
Fiction book (1998) -
The teacher created a nonce word for the new game to make it more fun for the students.
-
He used a nonce word when he wanted to jokingly describe a situation that had never occurred before.
How Permanent
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a word created for a single occasion' is directly and compositionally derivable from 'nonce' (temporary/for the occasion) + 'word' (a lexical item). This adjective+noun combination follows transparent compositional patterns and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent meanings.
Etymology
The noun nonce word may come from the old word nonce, which meant 'for the once' or 'for a single time'. So a nonce word is a word made just for that one time or one situation, not meant to be used again.