Nonce word facts for kids

A nonce word is a word that someone makes up just for a single time or occasion. It's not a real word that everyone knows or uses regularly. Think of it like a word created "for the moment."

People create nonce words for many reasons. They can be used for fun, in poems, or in books for kids. Sometimes, researchers make them up for studies about language or how our brains work. Other times, they might just appear by accident.

Some nonce words might have a meaning when they are first made, or you might be able to guess their meaning from how they are used. But if a nonce word becomes very popular and everyone starts using it, it can become a new, real word (called a neologism). When that happens, it's no longer a nonce word.

Other nonce words are just nonsense words. They don't mean anything at all, but they can still be useful! For example, researchers made up words like wug and blicket to test how children learn language. Nonsense words often sound or look like real words, even if they don't make sense. These are called pseudowords. They follow the rules of how words are put together in a language, so they sound like they *could* be real words.

What are the Types of Nonce Words?

There are different kinds of nonce words, and sometimes they can overlap:

• Nonsense word: This is a nonce word that doesn't have any meaning.
  • Nonword: A nonsense word that can't even be pronounced in a certain language. For example, in English, "bldzkg" would be a nonword.
  • Pseudoword: A nonsense word that *can* be pronounced because it follows the sound rules of a language. It feels like it *could* be a real word, even though it isn't. For example, "blurk" is a pseudoword in English.
• Ghost word: This is a nonce word that appears in a dictionary or other official book, but it was actually created by a mistake, like a typo.
• Protologism: A nonce word that has been used more than once, maybe by a small group of people, but it hasn't become widely known yet. It's like a step towards becoming a new, real word.
• Stunt word: A nonce word made up on purpose to show off how clever the creator is, or to make people laugh or admire it. Dr. Seuss often used stunt words, like "Sometimes I am quite certain there's a Jertain in the curtain."

Words Similar to Nonce Words

Many other types of words can also be nonce words. For example, a sniglet is a word made up because there isn't a good dictionary word for something. These are often stunt words.

Nonce words can also appear by accident, like when someone makes a typo while typing.

Nonce Words in Books and Poems

Nonce words pop up in many places, especially in literature:

• The poet Seamus Heaney wrote a poem called "Nonce Words."
• The word fluddle was once used by someone to describe a water spill that was bigger than a puddle but smaller than a flood. They made it up because no other word fit perfectly.
• The words Bouba and kiki are used in studies to show how the sound of a word can make us think of a certain shape or meaning.
• The word Grok was made up by Robert Heinlein in his book Stranger in a Strange Land. Now, many people use it to mean "to understand something very deeply."
• The famous poem "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll is full of nonce words! Two of them, chortle (a mix of chuckle and snort) and galumph (a mix of gallop and triumph), actually became real words that we use today.
• The word quark was used as a nonce word in the novel Finnegans Wake. Later, a physicist named Murray Gell-Mann borrowed it to name a type of subatomic particle.

See also

• Hapax legomenon
• Literary nonsense
• Pseudoword
• Sniglet