nonces

Noun (1)

nonce (plural nonces)

1. (archaic, now only in for the nonce) 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.
2. 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.
3. 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

Noun (2)

nonce (plural nonces)

1. (Ireland, UK, derogatory) 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)
2. (broadly) 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
3. (Ireland, UK, derogatory, slang) A police informer, one who betrays a criminal enterprise

   Synonyms:

   snitch

See all 8 meanings of nonce