# nonsense

Pronunciation: US say "NON-sens" /ˈnɑn.sɛns/; UK say "NON-suhns" /ˈnɒn.səns/

## Noun

1. Ideas, words, or behavior that are silly, illogical, and lack any real meaning, reason, or value.
   - Simple: Words, ideas, or behavior that are silly and make no sense.
   - _The committee dismissed the entire proposal as expensive nonsense._
   - _He had no patience for the nonsense being passed around as fact._
2. Foolish behavior, talk, or ideas.
   - Simple: Behavior or talk that is foolish or silly.
   - _She refused to put up with any more of his nonsense._
   - _The teacher told the class to stop the nonsense before someone got hurt._
3. Letters or words, written or spoken, that have no meaning or pattern, or that seem to have none.
   - Simple: Letters or words put together that have no meaning.
   - _The coded message looked like nonsense until the cipher was applied._
   - _Her notebook was filled with nonsense that no one else could read._
4. A claim or statement that is not true.
   - Simple: Something said 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._
7. A kind of poetry built on strange or surreal ideas, such as the verse written by Edward Lear.
   - Simple: A kind of playful poetry full of strange, made-up ideas.
   - _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._
12. A damaged DNA sequence whose products have no biological activity and that does nothing.
   - Simple: A damaged piece of DNA that does nothing useful in the body.
   - _The damaged region had become nonsense, producing no active gene product._
   - _Researchers mapped the nonsense within the chromosome to find the original deletion._

## Interjection

5. Said to emphatically reject something one has just heard and does not believe or agree with.
   - Simple: Used to firmly reject something you have just heard and do not believe.
   - _"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."_

## Adjective

6. Lacking sense or meaning; silly and illogical.
   - Simple: Silly and having no real meaning or sense.
   - _The committee struck several nonsense clauses from the draft._
   - _Children love nonsense rhymes that play with funny sounds._
11. Describing a mutation in which a nucleotide substitution turns a sense codon into a stop codon, so that no amino acid is coded.
   - Simple: Describing a DNA change that turns a normal code into a stop signal, so a protein cannot be finished.
   - _The patient carried a nonsense allele that produced a truncated, nonfunctional protein._
   - _A nonsense codon halts translation before the polypeptide chain is complete._

## Verb

8. To dismiss something as nonsense, or to belittle or downplay its importance.
   - Simple: To treat something as silly or unimportant.
   - _Critics nonsensed the report, treating its warnings as alarmist._
   - _Powerful interests often nonsense any plan that threatens their profits._
9. To joke around or waste time.
   - Simple: To joke around or waste time instead of being serious.
   - _They nonsense for hours when they should be rehearsing._
   - _He kept nonsensing instead of finishing the report._
10. To make nonsense of something; to render it meaningless.
   - Simple: To change something so that it no longer makes sense.
   - _A single typo nonsensed the contract's most important clause._
   - _Sloppy editing can nonsense even the clearest argument._

## Origin

Formed from non- ("no, none, lack of") plus sense, dating from around 1610. It is similar to West Frisian ûnsin, Dutch onzin, and German Unsinn, all meaning "nonsense".

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/nonsense (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).