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Hapax legomenon

Concept
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A word appearing only once in a poet's work or in literature generally

Detailed Definition
Hapax legomenon is a word that appears only once in a given corpus or author’s work, often carrying unique semantic weight or experimental force; in poetry, such words—whether archaic revivals, neologisms, or rare borrowings—can create striking emphasis or mystery, as in Shakespeare’s “honorificabilitudinitatibus” or Hopkins’s coined terms, where singularity draws attention to linguistic innovation and the limits of lexical repetition.
Example
Example in poetry:
Shakespeare’s “honorificabilitudinitatibus” (only once in his works); “Floccinaucinihilipilification” in 18th-c. satire; Hapax legomenon = word used once in a corpus; Poets sometimes coin unique words for effect
Additional Notes
Word appearing only once in corpus (language, author, text). Unique occurrence. Related: nonce word, lexical rarity. Study: deliberate coinage vs. textual accident.
Also Known As
unique usage single occurrence Nonce Word
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