Why aren't "nohow" and "nowhy" real words?

Question

So we have:

Where-Nowhere
When-Never(/Nowhen)
Who-Nobody
What-Nothing

Why can't we also have "nohow" and "nowhy"?
"No reason" works to some extent, but "nohow" isn't really replaceable in a concise manner, to my knowledge.
The real question here is not how to say it otherwise, but why it would be horribly wrong to use it. And would it?

GEdgar · Answer

I have heard "nohow" but have not heard "nowhen".  My dictionary has "nohow", with two meanings, one labeled "US" the other labeled "archaic"

nohow ADVERB
  1 (US) Used, especially in uneducated speech, to emphasize a negative.
  ‘they never executes nobody nohow’
  
  2 (archaic) Not attractive, well, or in good order.
  LEXICO

The answer to "why are they not real words?" is they have been used rarely or never.  But if you like "nowhy", go ahead and use it yourself.  Maybe it will catch on!

Think of "nohow" as a negative form of "anyhow".  In fact I think all of your words are like that:

Anywhre-Nowhere
*Anywhen-Nowhen
Anybody-Nobody
Anything-Nothing
Anyhow-Nohow

I said I have not seen "nowhen".  Well, maybe I have seen it (along with "anywhen") in time-travel science fiction.

Why aren't "nohow" and "nowhy" real words?

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