nonce
UK/nɒns/US/nɑns/
nonce noun: the one or single occasion; the present reason or purpose.
Noun (1)
nonce (plural nonces)
- The one or single occasion; the present reason or purpose.
- That will do for the nonce, but we'll need a better answer for the long term.
- [...] Dunce, / Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, / After a life spent training for the sight!1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section XXX
- A nonce word.
- I had thought that the term was a nonce, but it seems as if it's been picked up by other authors.
- A value constructed so as to be unique to a particular message in a stream, in order to prevent replay attacks.
- The protocol opens with A communicating in clear to AS his own claimed identity and the identity of the desired correspondent, B, together with A's nonce identifier for this transaction, I_(A1). ("Nonce" means "used only once.")1978 December, Roger M. Needham, “Using Encryption for Authentication in Large Networks of Computers”, in Communications of the ACM, volume 21, number 12
- The information gained by the eavesdropper would permit a replay attack, but only with a request for the same document, and even that may be limited by the server's choice of nonce.1999, Network Working Group, RFC 2617 – HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication, The Internet Society, page 22
Adjective
nonce (not comparable)
- One-off; produced or created for a single occasion or use. Denoting something occurring once.
- But particular men are not stereotyped for jobs nor particular desks (as against others) to sit at - the standard here is nonce.1977, Robert Anderson Hall, David Morris Feldman, Homenaje a Robert A. Hall, Jr, page 75
- Dickinson's association of heliotrope with Mary Bowles was nonce and fleeting, but the subject of gardens was always a safe one on which to address her: “How is your garden – Mary? Are the Pinks true –?”2009, Judith FARR, Louise Carter, The Gardens of Emily Dickinson, →ISBN, page 55
Noun (2)
nonce (plural nonces)
- A sex offender, especially one who is guilty of sexual offences against children.
- 1989 "assorted nonces, ponces and murderers, 'the worst men in the world' … on the nonce wing, where the child-killers, molesters and various perverts have to be protected from the other prisoners." (New Statesman, New Society, Volume 2, Statesman & Nation Publishing Company Limited)
- A pedophile.
- ‘He's a nonce[. A] nonsense merchant, a paedophile[,’ Terry explained.]2004, Jeffery Archer, A Prison Diary, St. Martin's Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 72
- A police informer, one who betrays a criminal enterprise
- Synonyms:
- snitch
- A stupid or worthless person.
- Shut it, ya nonce!
nonce meaning in Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
nonce in Tamil
- எண்ணம்
nonce in Urdu
- موجود موقع, وقتی طور پر
nonce in Bengali
- এখনকার মতো, এককালীন শব্দ
Examples of nonce in a sentence
- 'Idiot!' exclaimed the doctor, who for the nonce was not capable of more than such spasmodic attempts at utterance.1857, Anthony Trollope, chapter 6, in Barchester Towers:
- Both CCM and GCM require a unique nonce (N used once) value to maintain their privacy and authenticity goals.2006, Tom St Denis, Cryptography for Developers, page 340:
- Poplack et al. (1988, 57) found that 65% of their types were nonce and only 7% of the types were considered widespread.2010, Susana Rivera-Mills, Juan Antonio Trujillo -, Building Communities and Making Connections, →ISBN, page 191:
- Some of the single-citation terms appeared to be nonce formations, that is, created for the occasion.2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 16:
Synonyms of nonce
Forms of nonce
| plural | nonces |
|---|
Origin of nonce
Inherited from Middle English nonse, nones, a rebracketing of Middle English to þen anes, for þen anes (to/for the once (i.e., the one occasion or instance)), from the dative singular neuter of þe. The cryptography sense is commonly said to be a contraction of number used once, although this is probably incorrect.
1975. Unknown, derived from British criminal slang. Several origins have been proposed; possibly derived from dialectal nonce, nonse (“stupid, worthless individual”) (but this cannot be shown to predate nonce "child-molester" and is likely a toned-down usage of the same insult), or Nance, nance (“effeminate man, homosexual”), from nancy or nancyboy. The rhyme with ponce has also been noted. As prison slang also said to be an acronym for "Not On Normal Communal Exercise" (Stevens 2012), but this is likely a backronym.
Words formed from nonce
- for the nonce
- nonce borrowing
- nonce word
- noncery
- noncy
Phrases with nonce
Words that rhyme with nonce
Questions about nonce
- What does nonce mean?
- Nonce means the one or single occasion; the present reason or purpose.
- What is nonce in Tamil?
- Nonce in Tamil is எண்ணம். See Nonce meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use nonce in a sentence?
- 'Idiot!' exclaimed the doctor, who for the nonce was not capable of more than such spasmodic attempts at utterance.
- What part of speech is nonce?
- Nonce can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce nonce?
- Nonce is pronounced /nɒns/ (UK).
- What is the plural of nonce?
- The plural of nonce is nonces.
Words near nonce in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nonce (page history and authors); nonce (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nonce (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); nonce (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-nonce.ogg.
Cite this entry: “nonce.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nonce. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.