wug

noun — 2 senses

wug

noun

US, UK /wʌɡ/ · AU, NZ /wɐɡ/

Etymology Pseudoword, coined ex nihilo by American psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason in the 1950s as a word that children taking the test would not have heard before.

Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences An imaginary creature resembling a bird, used in the Wug Test to investigate the acquisition of the plural form in English-speaking children.

Derived terms: Wug Test, wug word

wug

noun

Etymology Blend of worm + bug.

Anthropology, Human sciences, Sciences In folk taxonomy, a creature with worm or insect features; colloquially, a bug or creepy-crawly.

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.