Your Hapax Legomenon or Mine?

----By J.L.S.

---WHAT I PROPOSE, then, is to have a look at this checklist of hapax legomena, and think Griceianly as you do. Eurekas in comments. Enjoy!

But before: consider the context. Think of each entry, and think of this 'idiotic' (i.e. lovely and full of idionscyrasy -- hence 'idio-' --) idea of defining these things. Murray coined "nonce-word" which _differs_ from the 'hapax legomenon' proper. Words which were thought of as 'hapax Legomena' (e.g., Joyce 'plotch') were later found to have been used by others. From the site indicated below then, the historic context:

From:

http://oed.hertford.ox.ac.uk/main/content/view/402/450/

"One can see the OED Delegates' point.

The OED exists to chart the history

and development of the English language.

By definition, a nonce-usage or a

hapax legomenon has not contributed

to the development of the English language,

since, otherwise, it would not

have been used just 'for the nonce':

if the expression had been found useful

by the rest of the language community

- perhaps because it was expressive,

witty, filled a gap no other word

filled, or some other reason -

then other people would have taken it

up and it would be evidenced

in other texts. Sometimes, it's true,

a particular term, known to be the

creation of a particular writer,

is taken up by other language users,

[e.g. Sidonius, 'implicatura'. JLS],

but with specific reference to its

original use: Austen's "noonshine"

[and Austin's "performative" and

"illocutionary" JLS] for example. Another

example is Miss Seward. She had the

knack for the rare, the hapax

legomenon, and the nonce. And she

knew it."

* * * * * * *

Selections from the Letters of Miss Seward, with special reference to those words she invented trusting the intelligent readers of his letters (usually his mother) would make up of them. From site indicated above:

crescent, v. nonce-wd. 2. To border or surround crescent-wise.
1809 MISS SEWARD Lett. VI. 195 (T.)

1. "A dark wood crescents more than half the lawn."
---- (Seward, 1809)
----The OED reads: "crescent, v. nonce-wd 2. To border or surround crescent-wise." Lett. VI. 195 (T.)

2. "I lifted the drop-bolt."
---- (Seward, 1786)
---- The OED reads, "
----'a bolt constructed so as to drop into a socket'
---- Lett. I. 225,

dun, a. More vaguely: Dark, dusky (from absence of light); murky, gloomy' - only figurative example):
1797 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) V. 11

3. "Frowning like herself, in dun cogitation."


dupism (s.v. dupe):
1798 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) V. 171
4. "That single instance of dupism."

floret (sense 2: 'A small flower, a floweret';
Seward's is the only figurative example): 1786
A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) I. 150,
4. "I may one day present you with my poetic florets."

girlism.'nonce-wd. Girls, or their characteristics, collectively')
1788 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) II. 186

5a. "The prejudices of girlism."

1795 Ibid. IV. 70

5b. "With her sister, Miss Bowater, I passed some of the sprightly days of girlism."

grandmotherism: 1806 Lett. (1811) VI. 324

6. "The apparent grandmotherism seems now reversed between us."

hoar-frost (attributive use): 1804 Mem. Darwin 323

7. "A fine picture of an hoar-frost landscape."

impersonization (s.v. impersonize; 'the action of personifying; impersonation'):
1796 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) IV. 192

8a. "Those lines in the centre, which present [...] an impersonization of winter."

1797 Ibid. 306

8b. "Dr. Darwin's impersonization of that death-breathing gale, in the Botanic Garden.

horn cattle (= horned cattle, s.v. horn, n., sense 30):
1793 MISS SEWARD Lett. (1811) III. 257

9. "Beauties of horn-cattle."

hostilize (To render hostile; to cause to be an enemy'):
1794 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) III. 376

10. "The powers already hostilized against an impious nation."

hushy ('That is characterized by the sound hush'):
1803 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) VI. 97

11. "The hushy sound (if I may be allowed to coin that epithet) of the sea~shore."

illocal, a. (sense 2: 'Out of place, misplaced. Obs. nonce-use.'):
1804 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) VI. 180

12 "Not to be considered as impertinent, or (if I may be allowed to coin a word, which is lawfully compounded) illocal."

inefficience ('Obs. rare'):
1797 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) IV. 377

13. "What does it prove but the inefficience of an inert majority, opposed to the active struggles of a party, less numerous by two-thirds?"

intransfusible ('rare...That cannot be transfused'):
1804 A. SEWARD Mem. Darwin 209

14. "The perhaps intransfusable felicities of verbal expression."

maidenish (used as combinatorial form):
1789 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) II. 250

15. "But, Lord! what a pale, maidenish-looking animal for a voluptuary!"

[OED3 draft revision September 2009 retains as only example and now labels 'Obs. rare']

mildewer (from verb mildew):
1807 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) VI. 389

16. "The man..is a noted mildewer on the profits of the noblest verse."

[OED3 draft revision June 2008 retains as only example and now labels 'Obs. rare']

miserism ('rare-1...Miserliness'):
1798 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) V. 155

17. "Mr Newton has put an immense sponge upon Dr Falconer's reproach to his miserism."

[OED3 draft revision June 2002 retains Seward as first example but has found two other quotations, dated 1871 and 2001, and changed the label to 'rare']

moleism (s.v. mole, n.2: 'nonce-wd., mole-like character'):
1787 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) I. 378

18a. "Darwin is a mole to Milton, and that you will say is indeed a molism."

1796 Ibid. IV. 189

18b. "She, not aware of his moleism, relied upon it that all was well."

[OED3 draft revision September 2009 retains these two quotations from Seward as sole attestation to the word]

mulism ('nonce-wd'):
1798 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) V. 167

19. "It was one of her little mulisms to fancy and assert that she could not understand verse."

[OED3 draft revision March 2003 retains as sole quotation for this sense, drops the label 'nonce-wd', adds the label 'Obs.', and provides no further comment]

numbskullism:
1806 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) VI. 268

20. "His reminiscences familiarize us with the interior of the court of George the First and Second, and display, in full light, the numskullism of both those regal personages."

[OED3 draft revision September 2009 retains as first example and has only found one other, dated 2000. Despite this apparent rarety of use it applies no label, however]

(s.v. open, a., sense 22):
1804 A. SEWARD Mem. Darwin 6

21. "Open-housed hospitality."

[OED3 draft revision September 2003 retains as first quotation but has found two other quotations, dated 1870 and 2001. It labels the use 'now rare']

(sense b: 'Humorously used for "paunch"'):
1804 A. SEWARD Mem. Darwin 142

22. "Lakes of milk ran curdling into whey, within the ebon concave of their [cats'] pancheons"

[OED3 draft revision March 2009 retains as only example and labels 'Obs. rare']

(s.v. -phobia):
1803 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) VI. 94

23. "He is a very laconic personage, and has upon him the penphobia."

[remains only example of term in OED3 draft revision December 2008 and has been elevated to first quotation in the entry]

(s.v. pin, v., sense 12: 'Comb., as pin-faith a., that "pins one's faith" on something...implicitly believing or credulous'): 1800
A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) V. 316

24. "The pin-faith multitude, which never thinks for itself."

[OED3 draft revision March 2009 elevates to separate entry and labels 'Obs. nonce-wd.']

(s.v. prosify):
1788 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) II. 12

25. "The that's, the which's, the who's, and the whom's, are prosefiers, [...]injurious to the melody of verse"

[OED3 draft revision June 2007 retains as first quotation but has found three subsequent quotations, from 1970 on. No label]

'rare-1...Oddity'):
1788 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) II. 91

26. "His height and proportion mighty slender [...] nor are his sharp features [...] a whit behind them in quizzity."

[OED3 draft revision June 2008 keeps as hapax legomenon and adds 'Obs.' label; it also compares, in square brackets, '[1805 W. IOOR Independence IV. 52 Give me leave to introduce to your notice, Sir Strutabout Talkbig, of Quizzity Hall.]']

1796 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) IV. 275

27. "What a wonderful performance is Mr. Burke's late attempt to re-frenzy the nation!"

[remains a hapax legomenon in OED3 draft revision September 2009, which adds label 'Obs.']

'rare'
1796
A. SEWARD To Thomas Erskine xi,

28. "The urn, whence Fate Throws her pale edicts in reverseless doom!"

'irreg. variant of ROSERY':
1791 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) III. 81

29. "The rosiery will not, I trust, have exhausted all its bloom and fragrance..before I reach you."

('rare-1'):
1806 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) VI. 304

30. "The twenty-fourth canto opens with a description of hoar-frost similarized to snow."

sirenic ('Of persons: Sweet-singing'):
1797 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) IV. 393

31. "Nor less was he charmed with the vocal duetts and trios of our syrenic friends."

'rare...Of or belonging to, befitting, a squire; squirely':
1791 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) III. 99

32. "The whole wide expanse is dotted over by white rough-cast cottages, and here and there a village-spire and squiral chateau."

1804 Ibid. VI. 198

33. "The residence of squiral opulence."

('to play the squiress. rare-1'):
1786 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) I. 109

34. "Your old acquaintance,..who married a Warwickshire squire, [...] squiresses it with much loquacious importance."

1802 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) VI. 27

35. "The Gothic mythology, demonized by the elder bards of Caledonia, sylphized by Shakespeare, and the British poets."

technicism ('A technical term or expression, a technicality'):
1799 A. SEWARD Lett. (1821) V. 263

36. "Bewildered in a maze of scholastic technicisms"

(s.v. terrific, a. (n.): 'Terrific things'):
1798 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) V. 174

37. "To exhibit, among his mock-terrifics, some pictures that have the genuine grandeur of horror."

('rare-1...Umpirage'):
1792 A. SEWARD Lett. (1811) III. 150

38. "If the umpireism of dispassionate examination is to be rejected, and the ardours of zeal confided in implicitly."

39. "The motto you will find underdrawn in the lines which suggested my design." (Seward, 1799). (Lett 1811 V 195). "underdraw, to mark the lines drawn underneath".

40. "Vulgarisms, of most ungentlewomanlike choice, and most unscholar-like frequency." (Seward, 1789) (Lett 1811 II 295)

41. "The single solitary Wight, who, in every one of these periodical olios, possesses his separate and un~partaken department." (Seward, 1807) (Lett 1811 VI 379)

42. "The quiet dispassionate simplicity of unritual devotion." (Seward, 1791) (Lett. 1811 III 80)

verbalism (s.v. section b: 'collect. Words, phrasing'): Lett. (1811) V. 285

43. "It is not amongst our modern songs that the musical composer is to look for his happiest verbalism." (Seward, 1800).

44. "His vulgar-sounding word, beleaguered, once used in the Paradise Lost, offends us continually in this new epic." (Seward, 1797). (Lett. 1811 IV 302)