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Certain words you hear in English are only ever heard in a single context. For example, skirl is used to describe the sound a bagpipe makes. Etymonline generously says the word is "rarely" heard outside that context, but I can't recall ever hearing it used for anything else. I imagine one could use it figuratively to describe another godawful high-pitched screech (sorry, bagpipe lovers), but there's no other bona fide usage for it.

What I want to know is stated in the title of the question: Is there a term for these one-off words? I'm sure there must be, but I can't think of what it might be.

Edit: Judging from some of the head-scratching comments I've received, there seems to be some confusion. Perhaps I did not make my meaning clear. I'm not looking for a word to describe the single instance of skirl. I'm asking about a class of words like skirl. I know there exist other examples of words that are only ever used in one context, but I can't think of any others at the moment.

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@Arjun J Rao: If you're curious about that, perhaps you could ask it as an independent question. – Robusto Jan 30 '11 at 2:27
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Additionally... Oi! Don't diss the bagpipes! :-p – Orbling Jan 30 '11 at 2:53
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Such a word would be so specific and limited in its use that it would be able to be used to describe itself. – Kosmonaut Jan 30 '11 at 3:15
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@Arjun & Kosmonaut: We have the term 'onomatopoeia' to describe a small subset of words, why shouldn't there be a similar word to describe the subset that Robusto described? – oosterwal Jan 30 '11 at 3:27
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@oosterwal: I hate to be a pedant—okay, I don't—but the correct form would be mononym then. – Cerberus Jan 30 '11 at 5:24
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4 Answers

up vote 25 down vote accepted

It's a "stormy petrel." The idea, as described on the linked page, is that (for example) you never (or, at least, rarely) find a petrel that's not stormy. Similarly, "all shrift is short," and lots of other examples. One of the ones there is in fact "every skirl is of bagpipes."

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Bravo! Great link, too. – Robusto Jan 30 '11 at 12:34
+1 However, note that now even the stormy petrel is not actually necessarily stormy anymore which implies that it is not even a stormy petrel anymore, since it can have, at least, two meanings (one is a bird and another a class of words). Similarly, for every instance of the other petrels I bet you will find a poem and a poet that used it without its storm, letting it imply its literal or metaphorical sense. – Unreason May 18 '11 at 9:15
Nice idea, but stormy petrel is a really bad term for it, since petrel is the name of a family of birds, including the black-capped petrel (www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=3911), the snow petrel, and several others – TimLymington Dec 12 '11 at 11:36
@TimLymington: yeah, the author of that page mentions that "there is such a thing as a petrel which isn't stormy, but the term was a catchy one so it stuck." – Alex Dec 12 '11 at 16:29
Let me see -- "stormy petrel" is a word? Am I missing something here? I mean, if phrases are to be candidates, there sure must be any number of them. – Kris Sep 18 '12 at 11:27
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Closely related are fossil words, which have no meaning outside of a certain set phrase. "Bated" survives only in "bated breath", for example.

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Accessible via docstoc.com/docs/123195596/… , Section 5.1.3 lists cranberry collocations which include either a fossil word, or a loan word not used otherwise in English, together with other word/s. One group of cranberry collocations "contains lexemes which are unique to the FEI [fixed expression/s and/including idiom/s] but homographic with other independent items", such as to boot (boot only occurs with this sense in this expression). – Edwin Ashworth Sep 17 '12 at 9:00
up vote 3 down vote

There is no clear word or term that conveys words that have a single meaning or are only used in a single context. The nearest match is the word unequivocal:

having only one possible meaning or interpretation.

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By analogy with prime numbers, this subset of words could be called "prime words", for they can only be described by one of them and its own definition. It would be a neat connection between words and numbers.

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