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  1. hapax legomenon love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A word or form that occurs only once in the recorded corpus of a given language.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A word occurring only once in a given corpus.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a word with a special meaning used for a special occasion

Etymologies

  1. From Ancient Greek ἅπαξ λεγόμενον ("(something) said only once"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Greek : hapax, once + legomenon, neuter sing. passive participle of legein, to count, say. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘hapax legomenon’.

Comments

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  • myroblyte I learned this word from Geoff Nunberg Mar 31, 2010

  • garyth123 I shall say this only once... Sep 26, 2009

  • ramsler Your definition is too restrictive. hapex legomena are those word in a frequency count of any body of text which appear only once. The inference is that one cannot predict anything about their overall frequency based on a single occurrence. Jun 21, 2009

  • fbharjo perhaps more properly named happenstance legomenon Apr 19, 2009

  • bilby Beautiful comment by wolfson. Wherever you are, we need you back. Dec 25, 2007

  • sionnach hapax legomenon, the googlewhack of ancient texts. Oct 8, 2007

  • akmed13 I found negromancer, presumably black magician, in the Burton translation of the Arabian Nights. Looked it up in the 2nd edition of OED & found it was listed as having occurred only once -- in Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights! Sep 18, 2007

  • stpeter Those of us who are on a first-name basis just call this one hapax. :-) Dec 10, 2006

  • wolfson How disappointing that hapax legomenon occurs in multiple lists. Dec 9, 2006

  • seanahan I had a professor who insisted we know the plural, hapax legomena Dec 2, 2006

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‘hapax legomenon’ has been looked up 2926 times, loved by 17 people, added to 62 lists, commented on 11 times, and is not a valid Scrabble word.