nonsense

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
8
Words With Friends
11
Letters
8
Pronunciation
/ˈnɒn.səns/
See all 3 pronunciations
/ˈnɒn.səns/ · /ˈnɑn.sɛns/ · /ˈnɔn.səns/

Definition of nonsense

12 senses · 4 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (uncountable, usually)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.”
See all 12 definitions

noun

  1. (uncountable, usually)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.”
  2. (uncountable, usually)An untrue statement.
    “You have seen it for yourselves in the play by Aristophanes, where Socrates goes whirling round, proclaiming that he is walking on air, and uttering a great deal of other nonsense about things of which I know nothing whatsoever.”
    “While at the hospital, David kept screaming and yelling nonsense, stating Vladimir Putin bailed him out of jail and is a god.”
  3. (uncountable, usually)That which is silly, illogical and lacks any meaning, reason or value; that which does not make sense.
  4. (uncountable, usually)Something foolish.
    “and central banks lend vast sums against marshmallow backed securities, or other nonsenses creative bankers dreamed up.”
  5. (uncountable, usually)A type of poetry that contains strange or surreal ideas, as, for example, that written by Edward Lear.
  6. (uncountable, usually)A damaged DNA sequence whose products are not biologically active, that is, that does nothing.

verb

  1. To make nonsense of;
    “At the Haymarket all this is nonsensed by an endeavor to steer between Mr. Stanley Weyman's rights as author of the story and the prescriptive right of the leading actor to fight popularly and heroically against heavy odds.”
  2. To attempt to dismiss as nonsense; to ignore or belittle the significance of something; to render unimportant or puny.
    “"They haven't nonsensed these workouts. They've taken them and used them very well. I didn't know how they'd respond, but they've responded."”
    “Very commanding: very much 'end of this nonsensing'. Mister Fared spread his hands and shook his thin head imperceptibly, as if to say he understood.”
    “He further nonsensed press suggestions that the Petroleum Unit was set up to assist in the administration of sporting activities.”
  3. (intransitive)To joke around, to waste time
    “When he meant "go and get one" he said to go and get one, with no nonsensing around about "liking" to get one.”

adj

  1. Nonsensical.
  2. Resulting from the substitution of a nucleotide in a sense codon, causing it to become a stop codon (not coding for an amino-acid).

intj

  1. An emphatic rejection of something one has just heard and does not believe or agree with.
    “The operators present this as a passenger benefit by claiming it provides early notice. Nonsense! This just means that passengers can't find any information about the train they thought they were catching. It simply disappears.”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Germanic *ne Proto-Indo-European *ís? Proto-Indo-European *h₁óynos Proto-Germanic *ainaz Proto-Germanic *nainaz Proto-West Germanic *nain Old English nān Middle English non ▲ Old English nān Old English nān-…

See full etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Germanic *ne Proto-Indo-European *ís? Proto-Indo-European *h₁óynos Proto-Germanic *ainaz Proto-Germanic *nainaz Proto-West Germanic *nain Old English nān Middle English non ▲ Old English nān Old English nān- Middle English non- English non- Proto-Indo-European *sent-der. Proto-Italic *sentjō Latin sentiō Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Italic *-tus Latin -tus Latin sēnsusbor. Proto-Germanic *sinnaz Frankish *sinnbor. Vulgar Latin *sennus Old French sensbor. Middle English sense English sense English nonsense 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”).

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