Abstract: The article is devoted to nonce words that serve as expressive means in a literary text. The subject of the research is nonce words used in Dina Rubina's novel 'Kordova's White Dove'. The author of the article examines word-building patterns that form the basis of nonce words in the novel and analyzes the particular way how evaluativity of nonce words used by Dina Rubina is expressed. Despite the fact that there is a great number of researches devoted to various aspects of nonce words nowadays, it can be affirmed that a nonce word has never been described linguistically as a phenomenon reflecting dynamics of the language. Moreover, nonce words can be of interest to researchers as a conceptual category closely related to particularities of perceiving and understanding the message of a literary text. Structural-semantic analysis of nonce words was carried out using the comparative method because comparison with standard forms allows to define the conceptual content of the author's individual lexical units found in the text. The author has used the continuous sampling method to collect data. The scientific novelty of the research is caused by the fact that for the first time in the academic literature the author carries out a structural-semantic analysis of nonce words found in Dina Rubina's novel 'Kordova's White Dove' by the continuous sampling method. The main conclusion of the research is that in Dina Rubina's novel 'Kordova's White Dove' nonce words are an efficient expressive mean and convey particularities of the writer's individual style. The majority of nonce words do not only express a positive or negative attitude but also demonstrate specific features of the characters' speech. Most frequently the writer uses lexical units created as a combination of various usual word stems and affixes in accordance with, or slightly contradictory to, established word-building patterns.