Hapax Legomenon
- “what is a hapax legomenon”
- “words that appear only once”
- “hapax legomenon examples”
- “biblical hapax”
:: COMPARE ::
Hapax legomenonvsNeologism
The short answer
A neologism is new. A hapax is unrepeated. An ancient word appearing once in a surviving text is a hapax and the opposite of new — the two categories describe completely different problems.
Side by side
| Aspect | Hapax legomenon | Neologism |
|---|---|---|
| Concerns | Frequency in a corpus | Age |
| Can be ancient | Yes | No |
| Creates | Translation uncertainty | Usage arguments |
| Relative to | A corpus | A date |
Which one you meant
Readers who land here meaning Hapax Legomenon rather than Neologism are usually searching for phrases like “what is a hapax legomenon”, “words that appear only once”, “hapax legomenon examples”.
Neologism
- “what is a neologism”
- “how do new words enter the dictionary”
- “neologism examples”
- “who decides if a word is real”
Read either one in full