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Certain words you hear in English are only ever heard in a single context. For example, skirl is used to describe the sound a bagpipe makes. Etymonline generously says the word is "rarely" heard outside that context, but I can't recall ever hearing it used for anything else. I imagine one could use it figuratively to describe another godawful high-pitched screech (sorry, bagpipe lovers), but there's no other bona fide usage for it.

What I want to know is stated in the title of the question: Is there a term for these one-off words? I'm sure there must be, but I can't think of what it might be.

Edit: Judging from some of the head-scratching comments I've received, there seems to be some confusion. Perhaps I did not make my meaning clear. I'm not looking for a word to describe the single instance of skirl. I'm asking about a class of words like skirl. I know there exist other examples of words that are only ever used in one context, but I can't think of any others at the moment.

tchrist
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Robusto
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  • What would be the point of having such a word to describe such obscurities? – Arjun J Rao Jan 30 '11 at 02:19
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    @Arjun J Rao: If you're curious about that, perhaps you could ask it as an independent question. – Robusto Jan 30 '11 at 02:27
  • The only other time I've seen skirl used is in the most excellent book, The Master of The Fallen Chairs by Henry Porter - it is supposed to be the first in a set called The House of Skirl, which is the name of the major house/household the book revolves around. – Orbling Jan 30 '11 at 02:52
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    Additionally... Oi! Don't diss the bagpipes! :-p – Orbling Jan 30 '11 at 02:53
  • @Orbling: Sorry. :) (If you're sensitive about the pipes, don't read what George MacDonald Fraser said about the sound they make.) – Robusto Jan 30 '11 at 02:59
  • @Robusto: To each their own. Though I do love good pipe music, but then I like most traditional music. Such tastes are in the minority, regrettable, not quite as regrettable as grime music being in the ascendant mind. – Orbling Jan 30 '11 at 03:02
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    Such a word would be so specific and limited in its use that it would be able to be used to describe itself. – Kosmonaut Jan 30 '11 at 03:15
  • @Kosmonaut: A platypus is a one-of-a-kind animal, yet it has a name. – Robusto Jan 30 '11 at 03:18
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    @Arjun & Kosmonaut: We have the term 'onomatopoeia' to describe a small subset of words, why shouldn't there be a similar word to describe the subset that Robusto described? – oosterwal Jan 30 '11 at 03:27
  • Do we have a term for words that are used for different purposes? 'Homonym' described word that sound alike, (read/reed), but 'bow' is used to tie a ribbon, strike a note on a violin, act as the front-most part of a boat, or an act we do after a performance. Are 'multinym' or 'polynym' real words? – oosterwal Jan 30 '11 at 03:34
  • If 'polynym' can be used to describe words with multiple meanings, may I suggest 'uninym' to describe Robusto's words? – oosterwal Jan 30 '11 at 03:36
  • I actually wasn't saying there couldn't be a word; I was only trying to make an amusing observation :) – Kosmonaut Jan 30 '11 at 03:42
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    @oosterwal: I hate to be a pedant—okay, I don't—but the correct form would be mononym then. – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jan 30 '11 at 05:24
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    @Kosmonaut: I think you have to break out the emoticons more freely then. Damned UTF-8 text, damned near useless for the wry and the ironic. :) – Robusto Jan 30 '11 at 16:11
  • @Cerberus: I agree with 'mononym'. – oosterwal Jan 31 '11 at 13:27
  • 'polyseme' I think would be the appropriate term for a single word with multiple meanings. – Mitch Nov 19 '11 at 17:49
  • Why is everyone avoiding the obvious term: 'unambiguous'? – AmI Jun 18 '18 at 20:56

7 Answers7

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It's a "stormy petrel." The idea, as described on the linked page, is that (for example) you never (or, at least, rarely) find a petrel that's not stormy. Similarly, "all shrift is short," and lots of other examples. One of the ones there is in fact "every skirl is of bagpipes."

Alex
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    Bravo! Great link, too. – Robusto Jan 30 '11 at 12:34
  • +1 However, note that now even the stormy petrel is not actually necessarily stormy anymore which implies that it is not even a stormy petrel anymore, since it can have, at least, two meanings (one is a bird and another a class of words). Similarly, for every instance of the other petrels I bet you will find a poem and a poet that used it without its storm, letting it imply its literal or metaphorical sense. – Unreason May 18 '11 at 09:15
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    Nice idea, but stormy petrel is a really bad term for it, since petrel is the name of a family of birds, including the black-capped petrel (www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=3911), the snow petrel, and several others – Tim Lymington Dec 12 '11 at 11:36
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    @TimLymington: yeah, the author of that page mentions that "there is such a thing as a petrel which isn't stormy, but the term was a catchy one so it stuck." – Alex Dec 12 '11 at 16:29
  • Let me see -- "stormy petrel" is a word? Am I missing something here? I mean, if phrases are to be candidates, there sure must be any number of them. – Kris Sep 18 '12 at 11:27
  • A good fraction of that list's examples are bogus, though: they're just common collocations. Just because the cerebral cortex is the only cortex the author is aware of doesn't mean that all cortices are cerebral. I'm not sure why he thinks "parlance" is an example, since it is reasonably common by itself. Nothing's special about "Maginot"; it's just a noun adjunct referring to the French politician. – Mechanical snail Feb 19 '14 at 23:43
  • i don't get the "zest" example at all. "zest" is used in all kinds of contexts. – user428517 Oct 23 '15 at 16:08
  • Similarly "bestride", which COCA has pairing with "colossus" only 5 out of 18 times, and even those not as a fixed phrase. – Charles May 30 '16 at 17:12
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Closely related are fossil words, which have no meaning outside of a certain set phrase. "Bated" survives only in "bated breath", for example.

Charles
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    Accessible via http://www.docstoc.com/docs/123195596/Fixed-Expressions-and-Idioms-in-English-A-Corpus-Based-Approach , Section 5.1.3 lists cranberry collocations which include either a fossil word, or a loan word not used otherwise in English, together with other word/s. One group of cranberry collocations "contains lexemes which are unique to the FEI [fixed expression/s and/including idiom/s] but homographic with other independent items", such as to boot (boot only occurs with this sense in this expression). – Edwin Ashworth Sep 17 '12 at 09:00
  • Hamlet thought he was dueling Laertes with bated points, but only his was ... – Robusto Dec 14 '16 at 01:32
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There are several terms for closely related concepts:

  • A nonce word is a word that somebody made up for a localized purpose. Apart from fossilized words, those nonce words that caught on are probably the major part of this group.

  • A cranberry morpheme is a morpheme that has no meaning on its own, and exists only as part of one or a small number of words. (It's named after the "cran" of "cranberry".) A fossil word is similarly a word that is used only in a small number of phrases (but whose state is specifically due to the original meaning's obsolescence).

  • A hapax legomenon (of a particular corpus) is a word that appears exactly once.

Mechanical snail
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There is no clear word or term that conveys words that have a single meaning or are only used in a single context. The nearest match is the word unequivocal:

having only one possible meaning or interpretation.

RegDwigнt
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Amin
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In the first part of your question, you have asked if there is a term for words that have a single meaning. I think the answer is "monosemy" which refers to the fact of having only a single meaning.

According to Oxford Living Dictionaries it means:

The property of having only one meaning.

JJJ
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محسن رحمانی
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2

This conversation may have rather run its course a while ago... but a friend of mine (author Patrick Woodrow) and some of his friends had a game called 'Dependencies' which was about identifying exactly these kinds of words. We've added to the list periodically over the years - it includes words such as 'shrift', mentioned above - as well as others like 'spick', 'champing', 'abetted', 'kibosh', 'betide', 'madding' etc. No doubt a number of these would fall under the fossil words referred to above too. Best wishes, Ed

Ed Elias
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By analogy with prime numbers, this subset of words could be called "prime words", for they can only be described by one of them and its own definition. It would be a neat connection between words and numbers.

RegDwigнt
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Lucca
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