Nonpareil Meaning: Pronunciation, Uses & the Chocolate

Nonpareil is a word for something with no equal — a person, a performance, or a thing so good that nothing else compares. It is a grand, slightly old-fashioned word, borrowed from French, and it carries its grandeur with it: you do not call a decent sandwich nonpareil. You call a once-in-a-generation singer nonpareil, or a hotel nonpareil, or a teacher nonpareil — and you mean it literally. There is nothing like it.

What does nonpareil mean?

Cambridge defines the adjective as “better than any other” and the noun as “a person or thing that is better than any other”. Dictionary.com agrees: the adjective means “having no match or equal; peerless”, and the noun means “a person or thing having no equal”. Merriam-Webster‘s word-history note puts it in the same terms: in English, nonpareil means “having no equal” as an adjective or, as a noun, “someone or something that is better than any other”.

The word is literary — Cambridge marks it as such — which means it belongs to written English and formal speech rather than everyday conversation. It signals that the writer is reaching for the highest possible praise, and the reader should feel the weight of it.

How to pronounce nonpareil

Nonpareil is pronounced non-puh-REL, with the stress on the last syllable. The UK pronunciation is /ˌnɒn.pəˈreɪl/ and the US pronunciation is /ˌnɑːn.pəˈrel/ — Merriam-Webster gives the American pronunciation as \nahn-puh-REL\. The differences are the familiar ones: the British o in the first syllable is the short o of not, while the American o is broader, closer to ah; and the final syllable is -rayl in British English and -rel in American English.

The most common mistake is to stress the first syllable — “NON-puh-rel” — or to pronounce the word as if it were French, “non-pah-REHY”. In English the stress falls on the final syllable, and the final l is pronounced.

Dictionary.com also records an alternative British pronunciation, /ˈnɒnpərəl/, with the stress on the first syllable — NON-puh-rul. It is a genuine variant, but much less common than the last-syllable stress Cambridge and Merriam-Webster give as standard.

Where the word comes from

Nonpareil comes from French, and its parts are transparent once you see them: non, “not” or “no”, plus pareil, “equal” — literally “without equal” or “peerless”. The French word itself comes from Latin par, “equal”, the same root that gives English pair, peer, and par. To be nonpareil is, literally, to be without a peer.

The word entered English in the 15th century — first recorded in 1400–50 — and the noun sense, “an unequalled person or thing”, dates from the 1590s. That long history is part of why the word still feels formal: it arrived with the French vocabulary of the court and the printing house.

Curiously, the word has almost dropped out of use in modern French: Merriam-Webster notes that the adjective is archaic in contemporary French, and a French speaker wanting to say “having no equal” would now say sans pareil.

Nonpareil as an adjective and as a noun

Nonpareil works as both an adjective and a noun, and the two uses are equally standard.

As an adjective

Placed before a noun, it means the best of its kind:

• Her nonpareil beauty made her the most photographed woman of her generation.
• The chef’s nonpareil soufflé has never been equalled.
• He gave a nonpareil performance as Hamlet.

It can also come after the noun, in the French manner — a usage Cambridge records explicitly: “He was the teacher nonpareil.” This postposed position is a deliberate stylistic choice, more formal than putting the adjective first. Use it sparingly: once in a piece is a flourish; three times is a mannerism.

As a noun

As a noun, nonpareil names the unequalled person or thing itself. Cambridge gives the example, “She was, he was convinced, the nonpareil among women.” The noun is usually singular and often takes the: “the nonpareil of her generation”.

• Among nineteenth-century sopranos, she was the nonpareil.
• The restaurant was once the nonpareil of Paris dining; today it is merely good.
• He regarded himself as a nonpareil among chess players, and the results, for once, agreed with him.

The other meanings: chocolate and type

Nonpareil has two further noun senses that have nothing to do with excellence, and both are worth knowing because they are the senses most people actually meet in shops.

The chocolate

A nonpareil is also a small flat disc of chocolate covered with white sugar pellets — the sweet sold in American candy shops, and the “chocolate nonpareil” of the Cambridge entry. The name was given to the sweet because it was considered unequalled, and the usage dates to the 1690s. In British English the same sweets are often called hundreds and thousands when the sprinkles are on a cake, but the chocolate discs themselves are nonpareils in both countries.

There is also a second confectionery sense: tiny balls of coloured sugar used to decorate cakes. If someone says “nonpareils” in a bakery, they mean the sprinkles; if they say it in a concert review, they mean the singer.

In printing, nonpareil was also once the name of a type size equal to 6 point — a historical sense you will now meet mainly in books about printing history.

Nonpareil vs peerless, unrivalled, unmatched, unique

Word	Shade of meaning	Register
Nonpareil	Having no equal; the best of its kind	Literary, formal, French-flavoured
Peerless	Having no equal; without a peer	Formal, slightly poetic — the plain-English twin of nonpareil
Unrivalled	Having no rival; better than all competitors	Standard, works in any register
Unmatched	Not equalled by anything else	Standard, slightly more factual
Unique	One of a kind; the only one	Everyday, but often misused for “very good”

Peerless is the closest synonym — the literal translation of nonpareil. If nonpareil feels too grand for a sentence, peerless does the same work in plainer English. Unique is different: it means the only one of its kind, not the best of its kind, and using it to mean “excellent” is a common error.

Correct vs incorrect usage

Correct	Incorrect	Why
Her nonpareil voice filled the hall.	Her nonpareil sandwich filled her up.	Nonpareil is superlative praise; using it for ordinary things sounds comic or insincere.
He was the teacher nonpareil.	He was the nonpareil teacher of teachers.	Stacking superlatives (“nonpareil teacher of teachers”) is redundant — nonpareil already says it all.
She bought a bag of chocolate nonpareils.	She bought a bag of nonpareil.	The sweet is countable: one nonpareil, two nonpareils. The abstract noun takes the or a.
The hotel was nonpareil in its day.	The hotel was more nonpareil than the others.	Nonpareil is an absolute adjective — something either has no equal or it does not. It does not take comparatives.
Among pianists, she was the nonpareil.	Among pianists, she was a nonpareil singer.	As a noun it names the unequalled one; mixing the noun with a different category (“nonpareil singer” for a pianist) is nonsense.

Common mistakes with nonpareil

Using it for anything merely good

This is the single most important rule for the word. Nonpareil means having no equal — not very good, not excellent, not the best in the room, but the best there is. Use it for a good meal or a pleasant afternoon and the praise collapses into bathos. Save it for the genuinely unequalled, or do not use it at all.

Putting it in the comparative

Like unique and perfect, nonpareil is an absolute adjective. “More nonpareil” and “most nonpareil” are contradictions — if something has no equal, nothing can be more without equal than it. Use unrivalled or unmatched if you need a comparative; they are gradable, and “more unrivalled” is at least defensible in casual use.

Confusing the sweet with the praise

The two senses are both standard, but they live in different worlds. In a restaurant review, “a nonpareil dessert” is high praise; in a sweet shop, “a nonpareil” is a chocolate disc. The confusion is rarely serious — context almost always tells you which is meant — but be aware of it when writing, especially in food writing, where both senses can appear in the same article.

Spelling it “nonparel” or “non pariel”

The word is one word, spelled nonpareil: n-o-n-p-a-r-e-i-l. The ending is -eil, not -el, and the word is not hyphenated in modern English. The French origin tempts people to add an accent or a space; neither belongs in the English word.

Examples of nonpareil in real sentences

• Her nonpareil beauty was the talk of Paris for a decade.
• He was the teacher nonpareil — the one every student remembered.
• Among the sopranos of her generation, she was the nonpareil.
• His knowledge of birdsong was nonpareil; he could name a warbler by a single note.
• The hotel, nonpareil in its day, now stands empty behind boarded windows.

Frequently asked questions

What does nonpareil mean in simple terms?

Having no equal — the best of its kind, with nothing else to compare it to. A nonpareil singer is a singer no one else can match.

How do you pronounce nonpareil?

UK /ˌnɒn.pəˈreɪl/, US /ˌnɑːn.pəˈrel/ — non-puh-REL, with the stress on the last syllable and the final l pronounced.

Is nonpareil an adjective or a noun?

Both. As an adjective it means having no equal (“her nonpareil beauty”). As a noun it means a person or thing that is better than any other (“she was the nonpareil among singers”).

What is a nonpareil in a sweet shop?

A small flat disc of chocolate covered with white sugar sprinkles. The name comes from the same word — the sweet was considered unequalled — and the sense dates to the 1690s.

What is the difference between nonpareil and unique?

Unique means one of a kind — the only one. Nonpareil means the best of its kind, with no equal. A thing can be unique and terrible; it cannot be nonpareil and terrible.

Can you say “more nonpareil”?

No. Nonpareil is an absolute adjective: something either has no equal or it does not. “More nonpareil” is a contradiction, like “more unique” or “more perfect”.

The takeaway

Nonpareil is the word for the best there is — literally without equal, from French non plus pareil. Use it as an adjective before a noun (“her nonpareil beauty”) or after it (“the teacher nonpareil”), or as a noun for the unequalled person or thing itself. Pronounce it non-puh-REL, spell it with the -eil ending, and never put it in the comparative. Above all, save it for things that truly have no equal: a word this grand is ruined by using it on anything less. And if you meet it in a sweet shop, buy the chocolate — it, at least, has earned its name.