Pronounced: suh-NESS, verb
Notes: I didn’t guess the meaning, but afterwards, I realized I knew another form of the word
Yesterday’s word
The word nonce means “in the present or immediate occasion”; it is usually used in the phrase “for the nonce”
First usage
Our word goes back to the mid- to late 1100s
Background / Comments
Our word comes from an error (and I find this kind of thing interesting). Our word came from Middle English word nones, used in the phrase for the nones. However, this phrase is an error; it was originally for then ones (meaning “for the once” — in early English ‘then’ is a modified form of ‘the’), and then became improperly divided.
Rejected Word
The word piquant (adj) came up, but I knew the word from reading – I don’t remember the author or book, but I could define it well enough to not add it into the queue for words to use.