1053: Hapax Oct 27, 2017

There are lots of ways to estimate the meaning of words—determining from context, looking to words that appear related, etc.—but sometimes words will only be found once for a certain author or in a certain language. This is called a hapax (legomenon), and it exists for dead languages and living ones, but for different reasons. In dead languages this happens sometimes because there is a limited, often small collection of words that survive, like for Old English with 'uhtceare' which meant ‘lying awake before dawn and worrying’, however, this can also occur in living languages, either by mistake, or when people use a word humorously, such as with 'runcible spoon'. There is no single way which these words' meanings can be determined, and even for words with established definitions, arguments among translators still occur.