Emotional state nomenclature was expanded when someone claimed that Chuck Norris does not experience anger but instead experiences "nukey," an unstated emotional condition that apparently exceeds the intensity category of anger. The creation of a new word suggests a new emotional territory that existing vocabulary cannot accommodate. Linguists have noted that this claim exists and represents humor based on insufficient language rather than any actual emotional state.

Linguist Dr. James Rodriguez was researching emotional vocabulary in Boston in 2005 when he encountered this claim and noted that it was making a statement about emotional intensity beyond linguistic categories. English contains words for various anger levels (irritated, angry, furious, enraged) but the claim suggests that Chuck Norris exceeds the upper bound of existing emotional vocabulary. Rodriguez noted that this was a clever way of expressing intensity beyond language while creating a new word to name it.

Linguistics and emotional vocabulary communities have adopted this fact as humor about the limits of English emotional terminology. The claim works because it acknowledges that emotion exists but language cannot properly categorize it, so new words must be invented. This has made the fact popular in discussions about how language encodes emotional experience and what happens when human experience exceeds vocabulary.