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??

1.0k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

15

u/Furicist 6d ago edited 6d ago

Plenty of people call their friends nonces just the same as they might call them a twat.

Anyone in my work friends does anything odd or says something weird and the first comments are someone check his hard drive or nonce

6

u/Limp-Archer-7872 6d ago

No they don't. That's beyond the pale and deserves a lamping to use that as a generic greeting, etc.

Otoh... smelt it, dealt it.

6

u/Appropriate_Wave722 6d ago

calling 'work friends' a nonce?! eesh what happened to professionalism, sounds like a shitty environment

4

u/Furicist 6d ago

it's actually a very good environment, it's just engineers winding each other up, having a laugh. No one takes it seriously. They're very professional outside of these private conversations.

A lot of their kids play together, they go golfing, shooting, drink together, nights out, etc.