Questions tagged [nonce-words]
The nonce-words tag has no usage guidance, but it has a tag wiki.
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Pronouncing "collacon"
What might be the correct pronunciation of the word collacon: KOL.a.kon or KOL.a.son? A collacon being a compilation of brief details related to a subject. Seemingly coined (collection + laconia = ...
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What is the history of the term "metasyntactic variable"?
Background
A metasyntactic variable is a word or term that stands in for something else, typically used when you're describing an overall pattern, and the subject under discussion could have any name ...
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What does the word “doofosity” mean?
I have already tried to look up doofosity in many dictionaries but met with no success, so I’m asking here: what is the meaning of doofosity?
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How common is the term "boondoggle"? And what is its origin?
Even for a country well accustomed to foreign policy boondoggles,
it was an impressive body count. Eighty Americans, eight Brits, eight
Germans — no French because they'd been boycotting Western ...
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Can “womenomics” be considered a neologism?
It is not the first time I come cross the term womenomics used to refer to a wider presence of women in the economic activities of a country. In this case it refers to Japan, a country where women ...
user66974
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Is the word, ‘nerdocracy’ just a nonce word, or becoming current?
I was drawn to the word, ‘nerdocracy’ appearing in an article in New York Times’ TV Watch section under the title, “Start-Ups and Upstarts.” It reads;
“There is a relatively new social order ...
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What is "gilhooley"?
Reading Ellery Queen's The Murderer is a Fox, I came across this passage:-
When Fox asked me on the phone to deliver a bottle of 100 aspirins, I
said: "Say, Mr Fox, what do you do with that stuff ...
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What does the enterprise to “feed the duck on Epsom Downs” mean?
There is the following sentence in the ending part of Jeffery Archer’s “The Forth Estate,” which I waded to after months.
In the showdown of the media owner Dick Armstrong and Sir Paul Maitland, ...
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What does "envacuuming" mean?
Here's a passage from the novel, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy:
They picked their way among the mummied figures. The black skin
stretched upon the bones and their faces split and shrunken on their
...
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Is there a term for words that have a single meaning or are only used in a single context?
Certain words you hear in English are only ever heard in a single context. For example, skirl is used to describe the sound a bagpipe makes. Etymonline generously says the word is "rarely" heard ...
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