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Glite Dictionary
🚫 Not a real word 🆎 Made-up word
nonword

nonword

8.6
Not recognized as part of the language or its dictionaries
  • adjective
  • /ˈnɒnˌwɜrd/
translation icon : no palabra
  • Nonword fluency (NWF) required participants to read vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel-consonant single-syllable nonwords.
  • nonword repetition
  • nonword repetition task
  • nonword decoding

Examples

  • The pattern of results for unexpected low achievement in ORF mirrored those of unexpected low achievement in nonword reading.

    Academic text (2014)

  • Phonological skills were especially related to word and nonword decoding skills and spelling production.

    Academic text (1997)

  • A similar process was carried out on the two lists for the nonword-target trials.

    Academic text (2002)

  • The nonword targets consisted of orthographically legal, pronounceable letter strings ranging in length from three to six letters.

    Academic text (2002)

  • In the first experiment, we assessed the letter-recognition process in word naming by studying the effects of orthographic neighbors on nonword naming.

    Academic text (2004)

  • Because of a computer malfunction, some children's recordings were truncated so that we could not use their nonword repetition data.

    Academic text (2011)

  • An example of a processing-dependent measure used to diagnose LI is nonword repetition (NWR).

    Academic text (2014)

  • We also administered a nonword repetition task (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998) to assess short-term phonological memory.

    Academic text (2011)

  • The genetic correlation between nonword repetition and an expressive vocabulary measure was nonsignificant, but the genetic correlations between nonword repetition and several other language measures (including a measure of grammar) were large and significant.

    Academic text (2013)

  • The teacher asked us to identify whether each term was a real word or a nonword.

Synonyms

nonce word
vsnonword
  • Specialized
9.9

A made-up word used only once for a particular occasion

is not accepted in the language's standard vocabulary

Antonyms

word
∞ 1.0

A single spoken or written unit that has meaning

How Wordlike

word
∞ 1.0
neologism
1 7.1
nonword
8.6

Surface Forms

nonword positive

Morphology

nonword = word (transparent) = non + word

The adjective is formed by straightforward negation: 'non' + 'word' yields 'not a recognized word', which is directly interpretable.

Etymology

The word nonword comes from non- 'not' and word, so it literally means 'not a word'. The non- part is the same as in nonfiction or nonsense, which helps you remember it. That's why we use nonword as an adjective to say something is not a real word in the language.