English Explanatory Dictionary

wug

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. An imaginary creature resembling a bird, used in the Wug Test to investigate the acquisition of the plural form in English-speaking children.
noun
  1. In folk taxonomy, a creature with worm or insect features; colloquially, a bug or creepy-crawly.

Pronunciation

wŭg /wʌɡ/

Word forms

wug wugs

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.

Derived words

Wug Test wug word
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