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Welcome to the forum, asusena.
By definition, a nonce word is only used once. If it's used again, it can't be considered nonce anymore.
Wiki notes, as one example, the word quark. It was a nonsense word used by James Joyce in the novel "Finnegans Wake." For a couple decades, it was a nonce word. Then in the 60s, physicist Murray Gell-Mann appropriated that word to describe a new type of sub-atomic particle. At that moment quark ceased to be a nonce word. It was now being used in theoretical papers, professional journals, textbooks, and even popular media.
I have not heard this term before and it brought up some questions in my mind. I read a couple of sites defining "nonce" and giving examples but they were not specific enough for me. For example "supercalifraginisticexpialidocious" was given as a nonce word and I can understand why. But since that word was created for the song of the same name and used in the movie Mary Poppins, I have heard it numerous times at various places. I'm not saying it is common, but it is used. In fact it was used several times in the movie under different circumstances. Shouldn't that remove it from the list of nonce words? I am unclear about the specifics of this definition. Can someone explain?
I'd heard the term nonce before, but had to do a little research on the definition before my reply to asusena.
As I understand it, the "used only once" criterion means "in only one work." So the fact that supercalifraginisticexpialidocious was used more than once in the movie is irrelevant. It's still a nonce.
By comparison, the word quark is used only once in "Finnegans Wake" (in a nonsense poem). And it was also a nonce until that word started appearing in other works, as I described in my earlier post.
Dick, I don't think that meaning for nonce is really that widely accepted. From my research, it appears it's more commonly used in cryptography and computer programming as a randomly generated single-use alphanumeric string. But there is the alternate definition as "a word invented for the occasion."
Well, I do agree with the definition of nonce words, but I am of the conviction that no word can remain single-use after all. Language is dynamic, not static. Language is in flux. It is developing, changing, losing old forms and gaining new ones. In this perpetual current words may be repeated in speech for various reasons and get a strong foothold in the language. Once we coin a new word , either uttered or written, it is not ours any more, it is sure to have a long way laying further. I would change the definition of nonce words slightly as it is almost impossible to find any single-use existing word in this fast-developing world.
Another troublesome point for me is the following:Where do the boundaries of potential words end and that of nonce words begin? I do not clearly catch the nature of potential words as every new conceivable word is potential.
Asusena
I've never quite understood why the makers of the IBM 5100 chose this word for certain error messages. Programming in APL, you might get the response "syntax error" if you typed something that didn't follow the rules of the language, or various types of "computation error" or "overflow error" if you tried to perform a mathematical operation on a number for which that operation was undefined. Trying to read a file that didn't exist might result in "I/O error".
But if you tried to use one of the APL functions to display the time or date, the message was "nonce error". It was clear why this was an error: the 5100 had no built-in clock, so the language couldn't provide a meaningful time or date. But why "nonce"?
Ron Draney says: ... couldn't provide a meaningful time or date. But why "nonce"?
One explanation here, but not very satisfying:
http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/error_messages.htm
It just means hey we can't even name the error just now.
That's pretty satisfying for me. With that meaning of nonce (for the time being, at this time, presently, for the nonce), at least that nonce error now makes sense. Kind of an archaic expression though. I don't use it. And I had forgotten about nonce errors until Ron mentioned them. I worked on a Burroughs 5500 mainframe back in college. That was the punch card era. And thinking back, yes, I recall seeing a nonce error on at least one occasion, because I had to ask the instructor what the hell it meant. I don't recall, in my case, what the error actually was, but it was probably something math-related.
Heimhenge said:
I'd heard the term nonce before, but had to do a little research on the definition before my reply to asusena.
As I understand it, the "used only once" criterion means "in only one work." So the fact that supercalifraginisticexpialidocious was used more than once in the movie is irrelevant. It's still a nonce.
By comparison, the word quark is used only once in "Finnegans Wake" (in a nonsense poem). And it was also a nonce until that word started appearing in other works, as I described in my earlier post.
Dick, I don't think that meaning for nonce is really that widely accepted. From my research, it appears it's more commonly used in cryptography and computer programming as a randomly generated single-use alphanumeric string. But there is the alternate definition as "a word invented for the occasion."
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