Hey Man, What’s Hapax?
Hapax legomena (the plural) are words that appear only once. Literally the Greek phrase means ‘once said’ and may label half the Joycean cookery that appear in Finnegan’s Wake, such as:
Pranjapansies
Reinworms
Diffpair
Troterella
Lemonsized
Caith
Rewritemen
And that’s only page 59…
Rather than cite Finnegan folderol, or once-only utterances in The Bible, and other sources, the Mac Dictionary goes for the plainspoken headscratcher (is that a hapax?) of ‘a word or form for which only one citation has been found.
Shakespeare’s own polysyllabic specimen is honorificabilitudinitatibus, form Love’s Labours Lost, or a thousand other Bard-born neologisms that didn’t quite catch on. You seen any hapax legomena lately?