I was developing a software application for a British customer. I sent him an update to review and in the README noted that I had disabled one of the features "for the nonce".
Fortunately he had a good sense of humo(u)r and forgave me.
I am a New Zealander, and a common difficulty with visitors is the difference between “can’t” and “cunt”. The vowel has exactly the same sound, but it is long for can’t, and short for cunt. Can uses a different vowel sound from can’t, which means we can misunderstand Americans who don’t pronounce the t in can’t properly. Fortunately we can usually pick that a tourist using the word cunt usually means can’t. It is especially difficult for some people, because they don’t naturally understand vowel length changes. In Māori and Latin vowel length is critical to differentiate words.
Kiwis often understand both British and American usages of words, for example calling something “completely pants” makes sense to me. Pissed can be used in either a British or American sense.
I have only ever heard of nonce in the software engineering sense, and never in the perverse sense (and I have a much wider vocabulary than most).
Pants here means trousers, following the American usage.
Usage of some individual Māori words within an otherwise English sentence is becoming more common here (cultural pride versus historical cringe), but I would expect most kiwis avoid using them if speaking to a tourist.
For the nonce means the same in British English, it's just not very common. He was just winding you up because it can be interpreted as for the kiddie fiddler. Think of Tommy: Fiddle about, https://genius.com/The-who-fiddle-about-lyrics
Kiwis often understand both British and American usages of words, for example calling something “completely pants” makes sense to me. Pissed can be used in either a British or American sense.
I have only ever heard of nonce in the software engineering sense, and never in the perverse sense (and I have a much wider vocabulary than most).
Pants here means trousers, following the American usage.
Usage of some individual Māori words within an otherwise English sentence is becoming more common here (cultural pride versus historical cringe), but I would expect most kiwis avoid using them if speaking to a tourist.