nonsense

Meaning

Noun

1. (uncountable, usually) Letters or words, in writing or speech, that have no meaning or pattern or seem to have no meaning.
2. (uncountable, usually) An untrue statement.
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.
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;
2. To attempt to dismiss as nonsense; to ignore or belittle the significance of something; to render unimportant or puny.
3. (intransitive) To joke around, to waste time

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

An emphatic rejection of something one has just heard and does not believe or agree with.

Synonyms

rubbish

absurdity

foolishness

balderdash

silliness

senselessness

gibberish

blather

lies

meaningless

stupidity

rot

twaddle

absurd

trash

folly

foolish

meaninglessness

bunk

idiocy

poppycock

nonsensical

silly

applesauce

bosh

falsehood

bullshit

unreasonable

hooey

unreasonableness

trifles

idle talk

trumpery

foolish talk

rave

piffle

ridiculous

speak nonsense

codswallop

blathering

cobblers

claptrap

lie

manner

insignificance

fatuity

abracadabra

joke

🤣

moonshine

hot air

Translations

Unsinn

Quatsch

non-sens

bêtise

onzin

nonsens

disparate

saçmalık

Blödsinn

absurdité

boş laf

absurdo

flauwekul

assurdità

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈnɒn.səns/

Etymology

Cognate with Western Frisian: ûnsin

Cognate with Dutch: onzin

Cognate with German: Unsinn

Cognate with English: unsense

In summary

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”).