Etymology is the study of the origin of words, and within this field, a nonce formation is a word created on the spot for a specific purpose. In other contexts, the term nonce can also refer to a random number used in cryptography or be used as a slang term for “pedophile”. The latter meaning may have originated from the unrelated term nancyboy, but the first two definitions stem from the phrase for the nonce, which means “for the present”. Interestingly, in the twelfth century, this phrase was spelled as for than ance, which translates to “for the once” in modern language, with than being a modified form of the dative declension of the. As the use of than in this context declined, people began to assume the spelling was incorrect and should actually be the, leading to the process of “rebracketing”, where the n was moved to the beginning of the next word.
