Words of the Moment VIII

Cheesy Readers, you may remember my last "Words" post where I pointed out that George R.R. Martin had fallen inexplicately in love with the word "worth" and used it every few pages in the fifth book of his Song of Ice and Fire series when in the previous four books I couldn't recall a single use of it. Well, he's at it again, this time with the word nonce.

A brand new word to me, and one I know he didn't use until these last one hundred pages of A Dance of Dragons, because the first time I stumbled across it I thought it was a typo. Like the word "worth" he's used it multiple time now all within a few pages of each other like he's suddenly being paid per use. Its meaning was easy to derive from the context, but because I'm a word geek, I had to look it up anyway.

nonce - for the time being, for the immediate time

For the morbidly curious out there, it is derived from the Middle English phrase "for the nones" before it was shortened to "nonse," and then eventually becoming "nonce" in more modern forms. There are also references that it also derived from a similar phrase "then anes" and "to then anes for the one purpose." You might also find it used as nonce word, which means a word that is coined for a one time purpose or occasion.

Our second word for this post is moue. I'm not sure where I encountered, but it was pretty obvious from the second I ran across it, it was of French origin.

moue - pouting grimace

It's pronounced just like that universal cow vocalization "moo." The funny thing about this word is its plural, moues, which is pronounced the same was as the singular form "moo."

So there you go. Further proof that you can expand your vocabulary through popular genre fiction.

Until Next Time...
Moue Mouesly Yours,
Michael