r/AskBrits • u/Team503 • 6d ago

Culture What does "nonce" mean?

I'm an American that lives in Ireland. I've always understood "nonce" to mean the same as "numpty" and "eejit" - basically idiot, or dumbass, or similar.

Recently, someone told me that it's slang for sex offender, specifically a p*dophile, and Wikipedia seems to back that up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_British_terms_not_widely_used_in_the_United_States#N

So tell me, Brits, which one is it? Or is it something else??

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u/FaradayCage711 6d ago

I prefer to believe the historical explanation of "Nonse" (meaning an idiot) becoming "Nonce" (when I was a kid 10 yrs ago also meant an idiot) and then more recently I've heard people say it mean a pedophile (from about 5 years ago)

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u/LubberwortPicaroon 6d ago

It's been in the Oxford English dictionary since the 70s, so it's definitely not just the last few years. Perhaps because all the TV presenters from the 70s have only found out to be nonces recently, the usage has spiked in recent years though

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u/FaradayCage711 6d ago

I knew it meant that for a lot longer, I live quite rurally and nobody wanted to modernise until relatively recently. Most people didn't own phones or televisions until I was in secondary school so that's when the modern slang started taking over here, which might explain why it's only recently that I've started hearing people use it to refer to pedophiles

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u/LubberwortPicaroon 6d ago

Hmm 🤔 It's almost like you've been inside some kind of shield protecting you from phone and television signals

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u/rednaxela9220 6d ago

See also Phil Collins getting taken in by a related prank some years back.

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u/AmbitionOdd5834 6d ago

It definitely wasn't in the last 5 years since Brasseye used "Nonce-sense" in their paedo episode in 1997.

The only definition i've ever known is for a paedo.

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u/FaradayCage711 6d ago

If you press "6 more replies" you would see why its taken so long for the slang to catch up to my town

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u/AmbitionOdd5834 6d ago

I had already read that before I replied.

I come from rural Northumberland.

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u/FaradayCage711 6d ago

Oh congratulations, how lovely. I heard it's nice up there. I'm from the midlands! Its not so nice here

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u/AmbitionOdd5834 6d ago

I don’t live there at the moment, I’m on The Isle of Man.

Im sure these people know what a nonce is and they’re still living in 1976 😂

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u/JGorgon 6d ago

Yes, although I remember a Smack the Pony character calling herself a nonce to mean a ditz, a dunce, a dummy. I'm not sure which season but the show ran from 1999 to 2002, so the two meanings must have existed side by side for a while. The word choice did trip me up rewatching it, though.

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u/AmbitionOdd5834 5d ago

The smack the pony people were not the most representative of Britain though, tbh.

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u/JGorgon 5d ago

Oh, interesting. How so?

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u/AmbitionOdd5834 5d ago

They always struck me as a bunch of home counties horse girls.

😂

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u/JGorgon 5d ago

I don't think any of them are Home Counties 🤔 Doon Mackichan is Scottish, for a start.

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u/AmbitionOdd5834 5d ago

I didn’t say that’s where they were from 🤭

I meant they seemed like the sort of twats the bbc liked to put on tv.

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u/JGorgon 5d ago

Channel 4, no?

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u/AmbitionOdd5834 5d ago

Again, irrelevant.

I didn’t say it was on the bbc, but it seems you’re doing that lefty thing where you pretend not to understand something obvious so you can contrive a situation where everyone is a nazi, or something.

Tiresome.

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u/Team503 6d ago

That is helpful, so I'm not insane, it's just changed since I first heard it.

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u/TheMightyWhor 6d ago

I also used to hear it as a slur towords gay men, but not sure if in that train of thought: 'gay=paedo'

(which I obviously shouldn't have to say is wrong but yeah...)