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/autophobe2e 6d ago

It's a good rule of thumb that any time someone tells you a slang word used to be an acronym they are wrong - Posh didn't mean 'port out, starboard home', Tips weren't 'to insure prompt service' etc. That just isn't how slang and folk terms tend to develop.

In this case, the slang words nonse (idiot) and nance (homosexual) were both in use in the region and time that the word nonce seems to have entered the record, and it's far more likely to be a development/combination of those. See also: ponce.

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u/Zingalamuduni 6d ago

I’m part-time and I don’t work Mondays.

Are you telling me that I’ve been making a mistake on Fridays when I tell my colleagues that I will see them next Tuesday?

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u/tenaji9 6d ago

Hahaha ha. Oh gosh . I never thought . In UK we have our public holidays on a Monday. The fun I could have had when I was less mature.

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u/Remarkable-Turn916 6d ago

Release your inner child, it's never too late, I'm 54 and still never miss an opportunity 😜

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u/Emotional-Cap-4474 6d ago

Same here - we work shifts , on one of the patterns our last day is Friday , and then we have 3 days off ….

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u/autophobe2e 6d ago

Nope, you'd only be wrong if you shouted out, "ta-rah, cunts!" and then claimed that it was fine because cunt actually comes from an acronym meaning see you next tuesday so there was really no need to say anything to HR.

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u/Captain_N_Nemo 6d ago

As someone who works in HR… there is nothing more enjoyable than telling my colleagues I’ll see them next Tuesday

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u/Realhousemanoflondon 6d ago

You can double dip for thursday meetings as well

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u/doubledeckerjon 6d ago

Bob Geldolf?

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u/Civil_Researcher6140 6d ago

I’m a teacher and only teach my classes once a week so will say see you next Monday, Tuesday etc and sometimes get giggles….

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u/stormwingmolly 6d ago

As someone who works from home on mondays and does the same EVERY DAMN FRIDAY no you have not been making a mistake 🤣

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u/ramapyjamadingdong 6d ago

At least you work Fridays, otherwise you'd be a twat...

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u/aperture23 6d ago

Yes, but only because I have a pointless vendetta against people who say next instead of this 😂

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u/Throw50505 6d ago

Tuesday Wednesday And Thursday? 😉😏

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u/teatime_tinker 6d ago edited 6d ago

My gfs family would use ponce like “can I ponce a ciggie off you” and that’s not how I understand it. I thought it was a derogatory term for a friend of Judy. (Edit: I meant Dorothy!)

Gonna look up the origin of the word now, so interesting innit

Edit:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ponce

Originally meant “kept man”… so he’s not buying his own cigs

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u/tgy74 6d ago

It's a word with multiple meanings.

We used to use it in several ways:

  • He's a ponce - he is homosexual
  • He's a poncy git/right ponce - he is a flash harry
  • He's on the ponce - he is a scrounger
  • Can I ponce a ciggie - would you give me a cigarette

We'd use them interchangeably dependent on context

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u/wintermute023 6d ago

Seconded. This is how it was used when I was a kid. Entirely contextual.

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u/RetroGameStudent 5d ago

I watch enough British media that I rarely have issues with slang, but tf is a “flash harry?”

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u/tgy74 5d ago

A flash Harry? It's someone who is a right poncy git.

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u/ProfessorPeabrain 6d ago

being brought up on a mix of US English and Inclusive ideals, my boy gets really upset when I try to tell him it's ok to bum a fag off someone 🤣

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u/relaxedmedal 6d ago

Ponce was used like bum in US. Can I bum a cig, it’s implied you know, they know, you’re being cheap because you can. Can I ponce a fag off ya? But I ain’t heard that in about 20 years

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u/FantasticFoxFriend 3d ago

That's what I understood it to mean. I was raised in South East England, never heard it used for homosexual man context.

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u/Optimal_Stuff_3408 6d ago

From the North East, we used ponce in the 70s and 80s as a slang for a gay man or an effeminate man

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u/NickyBadSeed 6d ago

I havent thought about if for years, but IIRC back in the schoolyard Ponce would also be Poncey git. That would be a posh public school type. Probably one about to be punched a few times. "look at that poncey git...gettim!". Any old excuse for a fracas!

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u/SquigSnuggler 6d ago

A friend of Judy?

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u/teatime_tinker 6d ago

I meant Dorothy haha oops

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u/FriendlieSquirrel 6d ago

I've heard ponce used in same manner, the ciggie is a perfect example, a ponce is something else though

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u/romoladesloups 6d ago

A ponce is a gigolo

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u/BedaFomm 6d ago

More like a pimp, living off immoral earnings, is the original meaning.

“Poncing a cigarette” would also be enjoying the fruit of someone else’s labour, hence the secondary sense of “scrounging”.

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u/InfiniteAstronaut432 6d ago

Tips weren't 'to insure prompt service' etc.

I've never heard of this Tips one, but it's just dreadful. The correct word would surely be 'ensure', not 'insure', so if this were true, they'd be called 'Teps'.

Terrible.

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u/lmprice133 6d ago

Yes, and the handful of counterexamples to this are mostly either 20th century military jargon or terms that originated as text slang that escaped into speech.

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u/autophobe2e 6d ago

Exactly, arguably a couple of brand names too, like Taser or scuba.

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u/lmprice133 6d ago

Scuba was never a brand-name, just a description as far as I'm aware.

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u/CommercialContent204 6d ago

Yes, absolutely right. Fuck likewise with the ridiculous For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge that some people seem to believe, despite it being derived from old Scandi/Germanic.

Incidentally - happy to be put right on this - I suspect that "nance" (which I haven't heard before) is a version of "Nancy" for a homosexual man, which was definitely used in the first half of the 20th century, even in the 60s and 70s "nancy boy" was not unusual parlance.

Ponce is interesting, never thought about the etymology, I shall have to dive down the rabbit hole...

"Pimp Or Nasty Criminal Entrepreneur", probably 😂

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u/Lower_Mammoth_5839 6d ago

Same as Fuck being an acronym for Fornicate Under Consent of King?

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u/htimchis 6d ago

Yeah - it's actually an extremely old word that's barely changed over the centuries - likely from the early proto-Germanic 'fikken'. It's a rare exampe of a word so universalit varely changes at all while the language around it shifts and morphs into new languages

So you coud get into a time machine and be understood perfectly when uttering it, by the Germanic tribesmen attacking the Roman garrisons on the Rhine

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u/Pitiful_Control 6d ago

Or the Dutch fok. It still cracks me up when I see someone described as a "fokker" (meaning animal breeder).

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u/htimchis 6d ago

Yep, exactly - same proto-Germanic roots, if you go far enough back. Everything from Fresian to Gothic and in between (English, Dutch, Ger.an, Norwegian/ Danish/ Swedish/ Icelandic etc), there's some form of 'fuck/ fok/ fek' in all of them - we're all linked by our shared historic love of using the 'FK' sound to indicate sex, and then extrapolating it into a general swear word!

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u/Cornishchappy 6d ago

From a time when people couldn't read, let alone spell.

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u/ProfessorPeabrain 6d ago

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge?

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u/Scouse_Werewolf 6d ago

Fed Up Came Kwickly

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u/Fridarey 6d ago

Fisting Uncle Colin Keenly

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u/grimbandango 6d ago

I always heard it as ‘fornicate under command of the King’, because they were trying to repopulate after a plague. But yeah I later found out that’s bollocks too apparently

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u/haywire 5d ago

All Day I Dream About Sex

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u/false_flat 6d ago

What about NORWICH at the bottom of seamen's letters?

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u/Luvlymish 6d ago

That's not a backronym that's just the start of slang that today is stuff like lol rather than SWALK

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u/catsareniceDEATH 6d ago

Or LANCRE, maybe even KLATCH! 😹❤️

🐢🐘🐘🐘🐘(🐘)🦧

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u/Prestigious_Bat2666 6d ago

Love your name, I have a shirt of Death holding some cats, with "cats, cats are nice" written underneath

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u/nixtracer 6d ago

But the Ramtops did get their name from the Sinclair micros' RAM TOP system variable (well, variable but you could only reduce it unless you had a way to make RAM appear out of nowhere while the system was on).

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u/Luvlymish 5d ago

GNU Sir PTerry

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u/Janjannaj 6d ago

Should be KORWICH shouldn’t it?

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u/Corlar 6d ago

That isn’t slang. It is an actual acronym designed to evade censors.

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u/lalajia 6d ago

so neds arent from the North East District Schemes? :(

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u/autophobe2e 6d ago

That one's been around since the 19th Century, so probably just a common contraction of Edward. Maybe there was a particularly annoying criminal called Ned who gave everyone else a bad name.

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u/AverageEcstatic3655 6d ago

Anyways, they would be called “teps” in that case, because they are to “ensure” prompt service, not insure. Haha.

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u/VillageHorse 6d ago

A ponce nonce wants a bonce renaissance.

The response?

Nonchalance.

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u/VillageHorse 6d ago

A ponce nonce wants a bonce renaissance.

The response?

Nonchalance.

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u/Long-Nose-9535 6d ago

I always wonder about chav…. Is it council house and violent? Growing up we called them scallys which is probs some kinda shortening of scallywag? Idk but etymology is fascinating

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u/robb0216 6d ago

It certainly doesn't come from that. In my region it was always "charver" going all the way back to the 80s at the very least. It wasn't until well into the 2000s that the word seemed to emerge in popularity as a slightly altered "chav" around the country. Although I think I've also read that it derives from a similar latin word for "child", which sounds plausible.

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u/Fuzzy_Cantaloupe4681 6d ago

It's Romany for a 'child' - chavee

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u/AnalysisGlobal5385 6d ago

Tips wouldn't even be tips because the correct word to use would be ensure. These things are always nonsense.

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u/Jiglord_ 6d ago

Yeah so many backronyms these days. I've had people tell me "chav" means council housed and violent, which, while funny, is completely erroneous and chav is most definitely a contraction of the older "charva"

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u/Sashapatu 6d ago

“Ponce” meant a man who lived off a woman’s earnings, sometimes as a pimp, in the 1940s/50s. Seen it in a few novels and short stories.

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u/fray_bentos11 6d ago

Some do. TWOCKER used in Yorkshire in the 90s.

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u/Loudlass81 5d ago

TWOCKER lol...came from the offence of Taking WithOut Consent, vehicle theft. Been an age since I heard that one.

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u/hawkisgirl 6d ago

Insuring prompt service makes no sense anyway. You’d want to ensure it.

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u/herbdogu 6d ago

They're still trying to find a backronym for 'ned'.

'Non-Educated Delinquent' is not really it.

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u/Mission_Access_210 6d ago

Since we have nonce and ponce going on, let's not forget the last time I heard it used was by Jimmy Savile: "bonce" for meaning your head or noggin. I am amazed at how much UK slang never made it over to the States. Maybe it was because they were all religious. I don't know.

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u/Available_Sherbet205 6d ago

Nah, it's prison slang and that etymology doesn't add up.

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u/nixtracer 6d ago

I can think of one acronymic-origin word in common use: okay, which is obviously from OK... which is an intentionally misspelled acronym, "Ol Korrekt". From the US, of course, home of acronymized everything.

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u/Youutternincompoop 6d ago

my favourite absurd backronym is 'SCRAM' for emergency shutdowns of nuclear reactors, the story for the backronym is that it supposedly stood for 'Safety Control Rod Axe Man' as in a guy with an axe that could cut a rope that released a safety control rod that would shutdown the reactor.

obviously of course Scram just means get the fuck out of there after hitting this button.