Non-word
noun, slang
noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Any sequence of sounds or letters which is not considered to be a word, whether through an accidental gap (for example, phextapher-styphren) or through a systematic gap (for example, fssstpklyitnbkdv).
"This linguistics textbook, like many others, precedes nonwords with an asterisk; for example, *narbletome."
- 2 Any term that is not among the words of a language as those have often traditionally been defined by nonlinguists (for example, having syllables, and having come from centuries-old predecessor words): thus, an abbreviation, acronym, initialism, alphanumeric symbol, number written in digits (Arabic numerals 0 to 9), or logographic symbol. informal
"In their glossary, they were using a convention where the words were in blue font and the abbreviations and other nonwords were in purple font."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"The non-word of the year 2011 is "Kebab murders"."
Etymology
From non- + word.
More for "non-word"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.