1. a word or form that appears only once in a text, corpus, or language
Usage: linguistics; from Greek hapax legomenon, meaning 'said once'

Examples

• The word 'quixotic' is a hapax in that particular medieval manuscript.
• Linguists often struggle to determine the meaning of a hapax because there is no context from other uses.
• In corpus linguistics, hapaxes are typically excluded from frequency analysis.
• The ancient text contains several hapaxes that scholars have debated for centuries.
• When analyzing Shakespeare's vocabulary, researchers identified numerous hapaxes unique to his works.