A hapax legomenon (pl. hapax legomena, though sometimes called hapaxes for short) is a word that occurs only once in a given body of text. If a word is used twice it is a dis legomenon, thrice tris legomenon. Beyond tetrakis legomenon, a word is not rare enough to note. The term is also used to describe a word found only once in all known writings in a given language. Some examples of these are: A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes. ...

• honorificabilitudinitatibus is a hapax legomenon of Shakespeare's works.
• Nortelrye, a word for "education" found only in Chaucer, and then only once.
• autoguos (αυτογυος), an ancient Greek word for a "plow", which is found only once (and exclusively) in Hesiod, whose precise meaning is obscure.
• Flother, a synonym for "snowflake", is a hapax legomenon of written English pre-1900 found in a manuscript from around 1275.
• Pim, a stone weight equal in value to two thirds of a shekel, approximately one quarter ounce, is a hapax legomenon of Biblical Hebrew found in 1 Samuel 13:20.

The term is popular among Bible scholars, who take the number of hapaxes in a putative author's corpus as an indication of his vocabulary and thereby argue for or against attribution. The identification of a word as a hapax by these authors means that it occurs once in the Bible or yet more narrowly, once in the New Testament. Honorificabilitudinitatibus is a word appearing in act five, scene one of William Shakespeares Loves Labours Lost. ... William Shakespeare—born April 1564; baptised April 26, 1564; died April 23, 1616 (O.S.), May 3, 1616 (N.S.)—has a reputation as the greatest of all writers in English. ... Jump to: navigation, search Chaucer: Illustration from Cassells History of England, circa 1902 Geoffrey Chaucer (c. ... Ancient Greek refers to the stage in the history of the Greek language corresponding to Classical Antiquity, which normally applies on two ancient periods of Greek history: Archaic and Classic Greece. ... Hesiod (Hesiodos) was an early Greek poet and rhapsode, believed to have lived around the year 700 BC. From the 5th century BC, literary historians have debated the priority of Hesiod or of Homer. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Events Eleanor de Montfort is captured by pirates in the employ of Edward I of England to prevent her marriage to Llywelyn the Last, prince of Jews over the age of 7 to wear the yellow badge and makes usury illegal Jean de Meun writes the second portion of the... Silver half-shekel struck in the Greek Colony of Taras, during the Punic occupation. ... Jump to: navigation, search Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by 6 million people mainly in Israel, parts of the Palestinian territories, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Bible (sometimes The Book, Good Book, Word of God, or Scripture), from Greek (τα) βιβλια, (ta) biblia, (the) books, plural of βιβλιον, biblion, book, originally a diminutive of βιβλος, biblos, which in turn is derived from βυβλος—byblos, meaning papyrus, from the ancient Phoenician city of Byblos which exported this... Jump to: navigation, search The New Testament, sometimes called the Greek Testament or Greek Scriptures is the name given to the part of the Christian Bible that was written after the birth of Jesus. ...

The term hapax legomenon refers to a word's appearance in a body of text, not to its origins or prevalence in speech. It thus differs from a nonce word, which may never be recorded, or may find currency and be recorded widely, or which may appear several times in the work which coins it, and so on. A nonce word is a word used only for the nonce—to meet a need that is not expected to recur. ...

See also

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