Supposedly the term originates in a UK prison sign N.O.N.C.E. used around the turn of the century, meaning "not on normal courtyard exercise".

"Obviously also a technical term used all the time in its technical sense with no problem."

Or sometimes not ... a blog I'm involved with recently had a WordPress server problem which caused commenters to receive a message like "Illegal operation: bad nonce". The readers are non technical and mostly British. Some had to be calmed down a bit!

Maybe it's an age thing? Everyone my age knows what nonce means but mostly because it was so amusingly satirized by Brass Eye in the late 90s at the height of a media induced paedophilia scare. Chris Morris got politicians and celebrities to say stupid stuff on camera by telling them it was for charity literally called Nonce Sense:

"Did you know that a child under the influence of a paedophile may smell like hammers? That's right - I'm talking Nonce Sense"

https://thesundae.net/2021/01/21/talking-nonce-sense-in-prai...

The program was a sensation at the time but probably only within a certain age group. I can't imagine that sort of satire would have appealed to older people.

it could be age-related. Though I was in the UK in the late 90's and don't remember this at all. But then, I discovered the internet and stopped watching TV completely around then too.

It's pretty prevalent in the UK, though the topics that it comes up in aren't all that common outside of the newspapers.

There have been some unfortunate mistakes from companies not aware of this. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9760601/Cryptocurre...