nonce

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The Word of the Day for January 24 is:

nonce   \NAHNTS\   adjective 
     : occurring, used, or made only once or for a special occasion 

Example sentence:
     Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky" is chock-full of nonce words, 
but a few of his coinages, such as "chortle" and "galumph," have become 
established in our language.

Did you know?
     "Nonce" first appeared in Middle English as a noun spelled "nanes." The 
spelling likely came about from a misdivision of the phrase "then anes." 
("Then" was the Middle English equivalent of "the" and "anes" meant "one 
purpose.") The word was especially used in the phrase "for the nonce," meaning 
"for the one purpose," as in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Prologue" of _Canterbury 
Tales_: "A cook they hadde with hem for the nones / To boille the chiknes with 
the marybones." The adjective "nonce" did not exist in print until the 
publication in 1884 of the _New English Dictionary on Historical Principles_ 
(which later became the _Oxford English Dictionary_). The editor of that 
dictionary, James Murray, created the term "nonce-word" as a label for "words 
apparently employed for the nonce." 





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