nonsense
UK /ˈnɒn.səns/ · US /ˈnɑn.sɛns/ noun, verb, adjective, interjection
Forms nonsenses nonsensing nonsensed nonsence non-sense
- noun Letters or words, in writing or speech, that have no meaning or pattern or seem to have no meaning. “After my father had a stroke, every time he tried to talk, it sounded like nonsense.”
- noun An untrue statement.
- noun That which is silly, illogical and lacks any meaning, reason or value; that which does not make sense.
- noun Something foolish.
- noun (literature) A type of poetry that contains strange or surreal ideas, as, for example, that written by Edward Lear.
- noun (biology) A damaged DNA sequence whose products are not biologically active, that is, that does nothing.
- verb To make nonsense of;
- verb To attempt to dismiss as nonsense; to ignore or belittle the significance of something; to render unimportant or puny.
- verb (intransitive) To joke around, to waste time
- adjective Nonsensical.
- adjective (biochemistry) Resulting from the substitution of a nucleotide in a sense codon, causing it to become a stop codon (not coding for an amino-acid).
- interjection An emphatic rejection of something one has just heard and does not believe or agree with.
Synonyms
falsehood lie untruth absurdity rubbish tosh silliness contradiction stupidity unreasoning all my eye all my eye and Betty Martin apple grease applesauce bafflegab balderdash balls baloney banana oil Bandini bunk nonsensicality meaninglessness hokum folderal falderol frill gimcrackery gimcrack trumpery
Etymology
From non- (“no, none, lack of”) + sense, from c. 1610. Compare the semantically similar West Frisian ûnsin (“nonsense”), Dutch onzin (“nonsense”), German Unsinn (“nonsense”), English unsense (“nonsense”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun That which is not sense, or has no sense; words, or language, which have no meaning, or which convey no intelligible ideas; absurdity.
- noun Trifles; things of no importance. Nonsense verses, lines made by taking any words which occur, but especially certain words which it is desired to recollect, and arranging them without reference to anything but the measure, so that the rhythm of the lines may aid in recalling the remembrance of the words.
Etymology [Pref. non- + sense: cf. F. nonsens.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “nonsense”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details