Hapax legomenon

Technically English allows the same, only that compound words are separated by spaces instead of either concatenated or joined with hyphens.

The reason is that hapax means "one time" in Greek, while legomenon means "that which is said". So, the noun is legomenon, which will be the word in plural.

A (not very good) analogy is "visible phenomenon". You would not say "visibles phenomenon", but "visible phenomena".

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one whose favoured childhood reading was the "compact" OED in tinyprint. That and the '57 and '67 encyclopaedia britannicas - I spent a year (in the 80's) charting the progress of mankind's knowledge in that decade - effectively a manual diff.

Thinking about it, I now zyxt that this was probably strange.

That's a very nice article. Really makes you think about the way languages and the meanings of words evolve over time.

>"The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy; and a humorous Peasant with a red nose and a very little hat, whom I take from this hour forth to my bosom as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed since he and I have met), remarks that the sassigassity of that dog is indeed surprising; and evermore this jocular conceit will live in my remembrance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible jokes, unto the end of time."

Surely the joke is the peasant's mispronunciation of "sagacity"? Also an odd Baader-Meinhoff, that story about the dog was on the front of reddit last week.

What, pray tell, is the difference between a real word and a new word invented?

I believe most hapax legomena to be cromulent.

This is a real problem, especially in Homeric Greek and Biblical Hebrew. One approach to figuring out what such words mean, is to go to similar words in related languages. Another is to use earlier translations (such as the Septuagint from Hebrew to Greek in the first or second centuries BCE), when the translators likely had a better sense of what the words meant.

If I am to interpret the wikipedia page, I think it's more common to talk about Hapax legomena within a single text -- or within a single author's work -- you could assert that a word was Hapax legomenon in the corpus of an whole language, but then you would have to have read the rest of the language's original recorded works, other people reusing the word from the original reference, and people overheard your own reference (assuming you broke the spell) without realizing they were breaking the spell.

How could you ever know if you were the one who ruined it, if it was or if it wasn't hapax when you first found it?

I was going to say a telephone book.. but I think it should be like the BBC's Just A Minute show, but in book form.

I think that might be impossible to sustain for any substantial length.

It's true, admittedly, such constraints are often embraced by authors seeking novelty; consider someone's novel written entirely without using the letter 'e'. This rule, though, seems excessive - constructions would grow increasingly baroque, English's famously large vocabulary stretched thin, meaning squirreled into obscure words, awkward transitions.

And yet, perhaps too hastily dismissing an idea is equally foolhardy. Exploring Borge's library one may, indeed, see everything in sufficient time...

This was the best I could find: http://www.amazon.com/SCRABBLE-Word-List-list-Scrabble-ebook...

Yes: "Never Again", by Doug Nufer (http://www.amazon.com/Never-Again-Doug-Nufer/dp/B000HWZ1VE).