hapax legomenon (pl. hapax legomena; sometimes abbreviated to hapax, pl. hapaxes), is a word that occurs only once within a context, either in the written record of an entire language, in the works of an author, or in a single text. the related terms, dis legomenon, tris legomenon, and tetrakis legomenon respectively refer to double, triple, or quadruple occurrences, but are far less commonly u...