Editing Nonce word (section)

{{short description|Lexeme created for a single occasion}}
{{Other uses|Nonce (disambiguation)}}

In [[linguistics]], a '''nonce word'''&mdash;also called an '''occasionalism'''&mdash;is any word ([[lexeme]]), or any sequence of [[phoneme|sounds]] or [[grapheme|letters]], created for a single occasion or utterance but not otherwise understood or recognized as a word in a given language.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/nonce-word |title=Nonce Word |work=Cambridge Dictionaries Online |date=2011 |access-date=6 November 2012}}</ref><ref name=Crystal>''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language''. Ed. [[David Crystal]]. Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]], 1995, p. 132. {{ISBN|0521401798}}</ref> 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]]), they stop being nonce words.<ref name=Crystal2>Crystal, David. (1997) ''A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics'' (4th Edition). Oxford and Cambridge (Mass., USA): Blackwell Publishers Ltd.</ref> Other nonce words may be essentially meaningless and disposable ('''nonsense words'''), but they are useful for exactly that reason—the words ''[[Jean Berko Gleason#Children's learning of English morphology‍—‌the Wug Test|wug]]'' and ''blicket'' for instance were invented by researchers to be used in child language testing.<ref>''Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society'', 2001, [https://books.google.com/books?id=mJAclUVF8jIC&pg=PA388 p. 388]</ref> Nonsense words often share [[orthography|orthographic]] and [[phonetic]] similarity with (meaningful) words,<ref name="KleinMcMullen1999">{{cite book|author1=Raymond M. Klein|author2=Patricia A. McMullen|title=Converging Methods for Understanding Reading and Dyslexia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=odCTqRTr0pwC&pg=PA67|year=1999|publisher=MIT Press|isbn=978-0-262-11247-5|pages=67–68}}</ref> as is the case with [[pseudoword]]s, which make no sense but can still be pronounced in accordance with a language's [[phonotactics|phonotactic rules]].<ref name="Rathvon2004">{{cite book|author=Natalie Wilson Rathvon|title=Early Reading Assessment: A Practitioner's Handbook|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hm7YvsJRz1gC&pg=PA138|year=2004|publisher=Guilford Press|isbn=978-1-57230-984-5|page=138}}</ref> 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]].<ref name="Lezak2004">{{cite book|author=Muriel Deutsch Lezak|title=Neuropsychological Assessment 4e|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FroDVkVKA2EC&pg=PA596|year=2004|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-511121-7|page=596}}</ref> [[Noun#Proper nouns and common nouns|Proper names]] of real or fictional entities sometimes originate as nonce words.

The term is used because such a word is created "[[wikt:for the nonce|for the nonce]]" (i.e., for the time being, or this once),<ref name=Crystal/>{{RP|455}} coming from [[James Murray (lexicographer)|James Murray]], editor of the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]].''<ref>{{Cite book|last=Mattiello, Elisa.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/988760787|title=Analogy in Word-formation : a Study of English Neologisms and Occasionalisms.|date=2017|publisher=De Gruyter Mouton|isbn=978-3-11-055141-9|location=Berlin/Boston, GERMANY|oclc=988760787}}</ref>{{rp|25}} Some analyses consider nonce words to fall broadly under [[neologism]]s, which are usually defined as words relatively recently accepted into a language's vocabulary;<ref>Malmkjaer, Kirsten. (Ed.) (2006) ''The Routledge Linguistics Encyclopedia''. eBook edition. London & New York: [[Routledge]], p. 601. {{ISBN|0-203-43286-X}}</ref> other analyses do not.<ref name=Crystal2/>