By James Aitchison

When words don’t come easily, invent them!  William Shakespeare did, along with J. R. R. Tolkien, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.

In fact, Shakespeare invented 2,000 new words and phrases such as hurry, eyeball, puppy dog, dauntless, besmirch and lacklustre.

Arguably, Shakespeare’s invented words had meanings.  However, this essay throws a focus on nonce words — often called nonsense words.

Nonce words are usually created for a single occasion or use, most commonly in children’s literature or poetry.  A nonce word — also called a pseudoword — is not a recognisable word in a given language.  Despite the fact it sounds and looks like a real word, it is nothing more than a meaningless string of letters that makes no sense — yet it can still be pronounced using the phonetic and spelling rules of that language.

A nonce word can be pronounced, while a nonword — like Wblpwcw — is never pronouncable!

When nonce words become accepted into a language’s vocabulary they are deemed to be neologisms.

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English poet, author and illustrator Edward Lear created one of the world’s best known nonce words: runcible.  Lear gained fame for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose.  He was a renowned limerick writer, as well as illustrating Tennyson’s poems and setting them to music.

It seems that Lear loved nonce words for their unique sounds, and runcible does have a certain ring to it.  The word first appeared in Lear’s famous poem, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, published in 1870.  It can be found in the passage:

           “They dined on mince and slices of quince,

           Which they ate with a runcible spoon.”

Lear so loved his invented word that he used it in many subsequent works.  There were runcible hats, runcible cats, runcible geese, a runcible wall, and even the Rural Runcible Raven.

Was there ever such a thing as a runcible spoon?  According to Lear’s sketches, a runcible spoon was in fact a ladle.  Some scholars believe the word runcible derived from Lear’s friend George Runcy who invented a special spoon for feeding infants.  Others suggest it was a reference to a butler named Robert Runcie whose job included polishing the silver spoons.

Lear brought nonsensical alliteration to new heights with creations such as a yonghy-bonghy-bo, and a dolomphius duck which once carried a frog in a runcible spoon!  

Nonsense words can tell us a lot about the authors and poets who coin them. 

Lewis Carroll (pen name of mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) is famous for his masterpieces Alice’s Adventurers in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871). His contributions to literary nonsense include the poems Jabberwocky (1871) and The Hunting of the Snark (1876).  His work features much word play, logic and fantasy. 

Carroll’s Jabberwocky boasts many nonce words, two of which — chortle and galumph — have entered common use, thus becoming neologisms.

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Arguably, James Joyce would seem an unlikely creator of nonsense words.  In his novel Finnegan’s Wake, he gave us the nonce word quark.  (“Three quarks for Muster Mark.”)  Years later, physicist Murray Gell-Mann adopted it as the name of a subatomic particle.

Nonce words can also serve as stunt words or sniglets, deliberately created to show off an author’s cleverness or to induce laughter.  Theodor Seuss Geisel was a serial noncer (is that a word?).  His Dr Seuss books are full of nonce words: streetch, strutch, gicky, sharggle, spuggle, berk and zoop. 

One of Geisel’s cleverest inventions was the word Jertain. 

           “Sometimes I am quite certain

           There’s a Jertain in the curtain.”

Jertain was a fictional creature invented to create a whimsical rhyme with certain and curtain.

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J. R. R. Tolkien gave the world the word hobbit.

In 1938, he was challenged to explain the origin of the word hobbit.  Was it inspired by African pigmies of a similar name?  Was it a word play on rabbit?  Tolkien wrote, “I do not remember anything about the name and inception of the hero.  I have no waking recollection of furry pigmies (in book or moonlight); nor of any Hobbit bogey in print … I suspect hobbits are accidental homophones, and am content that they are not synonymous.  And I protest that my hobbit did not live in Africa, and was not furry, except about the feet.  Nor indeed was he a rabbit….”

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Runcibly speaking, nonce words are as much fun to read as they are to invent.  In a world full of darkness and despair, nonsense is needed more than ever before.