nonsense

Formsnonsenses, nonsensing, nonsensed

1. 1
   noununcountable

   Ideas, words, or behavior that are silly, illogical, and lack any real meaning, reason, or value.

   The committee dismissed the entire proposal as expensive nonsense.

   He had no patience for the nonsense being passed around as fact.

   Similarrubbish, garbage, drivel, absurdity, claptrap

   Oppositesense

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Foolish behavior, talk, or ideas.

   She refused to put up with any more of his nonsense.

   The teacher told the class to stop the nonsense before someone got hurt.

   Similarfoolishness, silliness, tomfoolery, mischief

   Note

   It is usually a mass noun, but it can be counted when the foolish things are separate items. Writing on Telegraph.co.uk in 2008, the author lists "marshmallow backed securities, or other nonsenses creative bankers dreamed up." The plural turns scorn on each item in a list. Everyday speech keeps to the mass noun, as in put up with his nonsense or stop the nonsense.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   Letters or words, written or spoken, that have no meaning or pattern, or that seem to have none.

   The coded message looked like nonsense until the cipher was applied.

   Her notebook was filled with nonsense that no one else could read.

   Similargibberish, gobbledygook, babble

   Oppositesense

   Note

   The sense closest to the word's parts: non- plus sense, coined around 1610. German Unsinn and Dutch onzin are built the same way, and English once had unsense alongside it. It covers language that fails to mean anything at all, such as garbled speech after a stroke or letters with no pattern. Claims that are merely false belong to the 'untrue statement' meaning, and silly behavior to the 'foolish' meaning.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   A claim or statement that is not true.

   The senator dismissed the article as nonsense, insisting none of it was accurate.

   She spread nonsense about her rival to win the election.

   Similarrubbish, lies, falsehood, fiction

   Oppositetruth, fact

   Note

   Falsehood here is measured in bulk, not counted. Hugh Tredennick's 1954 Socrates speaks of "a great deal of other nonsense," and people yell or utter nonsense rather than "a nonsense." The word sweeps a whole stream of untrue talk aside at once. For a single false claim you want to name precisely, lie or falsehood is the more exact choice.

5. 5
   interjection

   Said to emphatically reject something one has just heard and does not believe or agree with.

   "Nonsense! I won't hear another word about giving up," the captain barked.

   When the boy claimed he couldn't do it, his coach simply said, "Nonsense."

   Similarrubbish

   Note

   A one-word verdict that usually stands alone, often with an exclamation mark, followed at once by the speaker's correction. Writing in RAIL in 2023, Philip Haigh meets a rail operators' claim with "Nonsense!" and then explains why it is wrong. Because it attacks the credibility of what was said, not just the request behind it, it can sound brusque. Polite settings call for something softer.

6. 6
   adjective

   Lacking sense or meaning; silly and illogical.

   The committee struck several nonsense clauses from the draft.

   Children love nonsense rhymes that play with funny sounds.

   Similarmeaningless, absurd, silly, illogical

   Oppositemeaningful, sensible, logical

7. 7
   noununcountable

   A kind of poetry built on strange or surreal ideas, such as the verse written by Edward Lear.

   Edward Lear's nonsense delights readers with invented creatures and absurd rhymes.

   The anthology devotes a chapter to nonsense, tracing its playful logic from Lear onward.

   Note

   Here the absurdity is the craft, not a failure, and Edward Lear is the name the genre hangs on. As a genre label it is a mass noun, as in Lear's nonsense or a chapter on nonsense. It also stands before other nouns in nonsense verse and nonsense rhymes, where it shades into the adjective.

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To dismiss something as nonsense, or to belittle or downplay its importance.

   Critics nonsensed the report, treating its warnings as alarmist.

   Powerful interests often nonsense any plan that threatens their profits.

   Similardismiss, belittle, rubbish

   Note

   Rubbish and pooh-pooh are its closest partners: to nonsense a claim is to wave it away. It turns up in journalism, from a Denver Post sports quote to a 2006 AllAfrica.com report in which an official "nonsensed press suggestions." The -ing form can also work as a noun, as in Leon Garfield's "end of this nonsensing."

9. 9
   verbintransitive

   To joke around or waste time.

   They nonsense for hours when they should be rehearsing.

   He kept nonsensing instead of finishing the report.

   Similarclown, joke, fool

   Note

   An intransitive verb that likes the particle around, just as fooling around and messing around do. C. F. Griffin's The Impermanence of Heroes (1963) has "no nonsensing around about 'liking' to get one." There it means dodging the point with needless politeness, a reminder that the time wasted can be spent in words as well as in idleness.

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To make nonsense of something; to render it meaningless.

    A single typo nonsensed the contract's most important clause.

    Sloppy editing can nonsense even the clearest argument.

    Similargarble, muddle

    Note

    Bernard Shaw, reviewing The Red Robe, shows the verb's natural shape: the thing ruined is the subject of a passive, and "all this is nonsensed by an endeavor to steer between" competing claims. The meaning is undone by confusion, often its own. That sets it apart from the dismissive verb, where someone else does the belittling on purpose.

11. 11
    adjective

    Describing a mutation in which a nucleotide substitution turns a sense codon into a stop codon, so that no amino acid is coded.

    The patient carried a nonsense allele that produced a truncated, nonfunctional protein.

    A nonsense codon halts translation before the polypeptide chain is complete.

    Note

    Geneticists set nonsense against sense. A sense codon specifies an amino acid; a nonsense substitution turns it into a stop codon, so translation ends early and the protein comes out truncated and usually nonfunctional. The adjective sits before mutation, codon or allele, and it names the change itself. The damaged, inactive stretch of DNA is a separate, noun use.

12. 12
    noununcountable

    A damaged DNA sequence whose products have no biological activity and that does nothing.

    The damaged region had become nonsense, producing no active gene product.

    Researchers mapped the nonsense within the chromosome to find the original deletion.

    Note

    Biologists borrow the everyday word for a stretch of DNA that damage has made useless. The sequence may still be there, but nothing it produces is active in the cell. It is close kin to the mutation adjective, which names one particular change: a sense codon turned into a stop codon. This noun names the inactive result.

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