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Definition: Nonsense |
NonsenseAdjective1. Having no intelligible meaning; "nonsense syllables"; "a nonsensical jumble of words". Noun1. A message that seems to convey no meaning. 2. Ornamental objects of no great value. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "nonsense" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1258. (references) |
Etymology: Nonsense \Non"sense\, noun. [Prefix non- sense: compare to the French expression nonsens.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Satire | NONSENSE, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary. Source: Devil's Dictionary. |
Multilingual Slang | German (Gebabbel, das, Gesülze, das, Gesabbel, das, Geschwalle, das), Italian (cazzata, merdata), Scots (bollocks), Swiss German (chabis). (references) |
Slang in 1811 | NONSENSE. Melting butter in a wig. Source: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Nonsense is an utterance or written text in what appears to be a human language or other symbolic system, that does not in fact carry any identifiable meaning.Distinguishing meaningful utterances from nonsense is not a trivial task. Confronted with a lengthy text in an unknown script, could you in fact determine whether those characters in fact contained a meaningful text, or were simply set using the equivalent of printer's pi or a lorem ipsum style text? The problem is important in cryptography and other intelligence fields, where it is important to distinguish signal from noise. Cryptanalysts have devised algorithms for this purpose, to determine whether a given text is in fact nonsense or not. These algorithms typically analyse the presence of repetitions and redundancy in a text; in meaningful texts, certain frequently used words -- for example, the, is, and and in a text in the English language -- will occur over and over again. A random scattering of letters, punctuation marks, and spaces will not exhibit these regularities. Zipf's law attempts to state this analysis in the language of mathematics. By contrast, cryptographers typically seek to make their ciphertexts resemble random distributions, to avoid tell-tale repetitions and patterns that may give an opening for cryptanalysis.
It is far harder for cryptographers to deal with the presence or absence of meaning in a text in which the level of redundancy and repetition is higher than found in natural languages: for example, in the mysterious text of the Voynich Manuscript. Some have attempted to create text that in fact carries no meaning, but still complies with the regularities predicted by Zipf's law. The Markov chain technique is one such method. This has occasionally been put into the service of surrealistic jokes; the fake Usenet poster Mark V Shaney posted texts generated by a Markov chain algorithm, and frequently launched flame wars with his unfathomable screeds.
The phrase "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was coined by Noam Chomsky as an example of nonsense. The individual words make sense, and are arranged according to proper grammar, yet the result is still nonsense. The inspiration for this attempt at creating verbal nonsense came from the idea of contradiction and irrelevant or immaterial characteristics (an idea cannot have a dimension of color, green or otherwise), both of which would be sure to make a phrase meaningless. The phrase "the square root of Tuesday" operates on the latter principle. This principle is behind the inscrutability of the koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", as one hand would supposedly require another hand to complete the definition of clapping.
Still, the human will to find meaning is strong; green ideas might be ideas associated with a Green party in politics, and colorless green ideas criticises some of them as uninspiring. For some, the human impulse to find meaning in what is actually random or nonsensical is what makes people find luck in coincidence, or believe in omens and divination.
The dreamlike language of James Joyce's "novel" Finnegans Wake sheds light on nonsense in a similar way; full of portmanteau words, it appears to be pregnant with multiple layers of meaning, but in many passages it is difficult to say whether any one person's interpretation of a text is the "intended" or "correct" one. There may in fact be no such interpretation.
Nonsense verse represents a long tradition; its best known exponent is Edward Lear, author of The Owl and the Pussycat and hundreds of limerickss. But according to Douglas R. Hofstadter, the crowning achievement in a nonsense limerick goes:
a "limerick" that does not rhyme and is not funny, which makes it funny. The above limerick was actually a parody of Lear's limericks by W. S. Gilbert. Similar to the limerick is the clerihew.
- There once was a man of St Bees
- Who was stung in the hand by a wasp;
- When asked, "Does it hurt?"
- He replied, "Yes, it does,
- I'm so glad it wasn't a hornet."
Nonsense verse represents a tradition older than Lear; the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle is also a sort of nonsense verse. Lines of nonsense frequently figure in the refrains of folksongs. Nonsense riddles and knock-knock jokes are seen often. Lewis Carroll, seeking a nonsense riddle, once posed the question How is a raven like a writing desk? But someone answered him, Because Poe wrote on both. However there are different answers.
In the field of Art, the Dadaism movement created nonsense art as an expression of disaffection with art and a society that seemed unavoidably addicted to the insanity of war.
Philosophically, nonsense masquerading as sense is the gist of the charges of pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy. Karl Popper's notion of falsifiability is an attempt to create an axiom for distinguishing sense from nonsense in the field of science; its validity remains controversial in the philosophy of science.
See also
- Wikipedia:Patent nonsense
- Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
- Wit
- Humor
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Nonsense."
Synonyms: NonsenseSynonyms: nonsense(a) (adj), nonsensical (adj), falderal (n), folderol (n), frills (n), gimcrackery (n), gimcracks (n), hokum (n), meaninglessness (n), nonsensicality (n), trumpery (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Absurdity | Verb: play the fool; talk nonsense, parler a tort et a travess; battre la campagne; gr/ hanemolia bazein/gr be -absurd; Adjective: |
Noun: absurdity, absurdness; Adjective: imbecility; alogy, nonsense, utter nonsense; paradox, inconsistency; stultiloquy, stultiloquence; nugacity. | |
Exaggeration | Noun: exaggeration; expansion; hyperbole, stretch, strain, coloring; high coloring, caricature, caricatura; extravagance; (nonsense); Baron Munchausen; men in buckram, yarn, fringe, embroidery, traveler's tale; fish story, gooseberry |
Imbecility Folly | Trifle, drivel, radoter, dote; ramble; (madness); play the fool, play the monkey, monkey around, fool around; take leave of one's senses (insanity); not see an inch beyond one's nose; stultify oneself; talk nonsense. |
Phrase: Davus sum non; "a fool's bolt is soon shot" clitellae bovi sunt impositae; "fools rush in where angels fear to tread"; il n' a ni bouche ni eperon; "the bookful blockhead, ignorantly read"; "to varnish nonsense with the charms of sound". | |
Loquacity | Verb: be loquacious; Adjective: talk glibly, pour forth, patter; prate, palaver, prose, chatter, prattle, clack, jabber, jaw; blather, blatter, blether; rattle, rattle on; twaddle, babble, gabble; outtalk; talk oneself out of breath, talk oneself hoarse; expatiate; (speak at length); gossip; (converse); din in the ears; (repeat); talk at random, talk nonsense; be hoarse with talking. |
Reasoning, | Sophistry, paralogy, perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet, quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness; Adjective: nonsense; word sense, tongue sense. |
Resolution | Devote oneself to, give oneself up to; throw away the scabbard, kick down the ladder, nail one's colors to the mast, set one's back against the wall, set one's teeth, put one's foot down, take one's stand; stand firm; (stability); steel oneself; stand no nonsense, not listen to the voice of the charmer. |
Unimportance | Joke, jest, snap of the fingers; fudge; (unmeaning); fiddlestick, fiddlestick end; pack of nonsense, mere farce. |
Interjection: no matter! pish! tush! tut! pshaw! pugh! pooh,pooh-pooh! fudge! bosh! humbug! fiddlestick, fiddlestick end! fiddlededee! never mind! n'importe! what signifies it, what boots it, what of it, what of that, what matter, what's the odds, a fig for' stuff and nonsense, stuff! nonsense! | |
Unmeaningness | Nonsense, utter nonsense, gibberish; jargon, jabber, mere words, hocus-pocus, fustian, rant, bombast, balderdash, palaver, flummery, verbiage, babble, baverdage, baragouin, platitude, niaiserie; inanity; flap-doodle; rigmarole, rodomontade; truism; nugae canorae; twaddle, twattle, fudge, trash, garbage, humbug; stuff, stuff and nonsense; bosh, rubbish, moonshine, wish-wash, fiddle-faddle; absurdity; vagueness; (unintelligibility). |
Unsubstantiality | Nothing, naught, nil, nullity, zero, cipher, no one, nobody; never a one, ne'er a one; no such thing, none in the world; nothing whatever, nothing at all, nothing on earth; not a particle; (smallness); all talk, moonshine, stuff and nonsense; matter of no importance, matter of no consequence. thing of naught, man of straw, John Doe and Richard Roe, faggot voter; nominis umbra, flash in the pan, vox et praeterea nihil. |
Veracity | Adverb: truly; (really); in plain words; in truth, with truth, of a truth, in good truth; as the dial to the sun, as the needle to the pole; honor bright; troth; in good sooth, in good earnest; unfeignedly, with no nonsense, in sooth, sooth to say, bona fide, in foro conscientiae; without equivocation; cartes sur table, from the bottom of one's heart; by my troth; (affirmation). |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Nonsense |
| English words defined with "nonsense": abracadabra ♦ balderdash, buzzword ♦ cant ♦ doo-wop ♦ Edward Lear ♦ Fiddledeedee, fiddle-faddle, Foddle-faddle, footle ♦ Galimatias, glossolalia ♦ heatedly, Hocuspocus, hotly ♦ incoherence, incoherency ♦ Lear ♦ metagrabolised, metagrabolized, metagrobolised, metagrobolized, Morology, mystified ♦ piffle, Pooh ♦ scat, scat singing ♦ unintelligibility. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "nonsense": All my Eye, Amphigouri ♦ cobblers, Codon, Nonsense ♦ Devil rides on a Fiddlestick ♦ EYE ♦ feature key, Fiddle-de-dee!, Flecknoe, FUDGE ♦ Marvedie ♦ ochre codon, Outcome ♦ Polarity of Translation, Proof ♦ RNA Splicing ♦ Scornful Dogs will eat dirty Puddings, SEAL ♦ waldo. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "nonsense": Foddle-faddle. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Oh, nonsense. This is nothing compared to the twig of '93 (A Bug's Life; writing credit: John Lasseter; Andrew Stanton) What makes you think either Miller or Sherwood would stand for the nonsense I take from you (All About Eve; writing credit: Joseph L. Mankiewicz) A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men. (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; writing credit: Roald Dahl) It was like a bird of rarest spun heaven metal, or like silvery wind flowing in a space-ship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied knew such lovely pictures (A Clockwork Orange; writing credit: Stanley Kubrick) Nonsense, you only say that because nobody ever has. (The Princess Bride; writing credit: William Goldman) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Nonsense Newsreel (1954) Neptune Nonsense (1936) City of Beautiful Nonsense (1935) Riviera Revels - Travelaugh No. 11: Scents and Nonsense (1927) Scents and Nonsense (1926) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Help nonsense! If it gets too deep, you can easily pull me in. Credit: Library of Congress. |  | "Don't let us have any more of this nonsense. It is a good trait to stand by one's friends; but -" / Th. Nast. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Benjamin Disraeli | Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. |
Benjamin Franklin | The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense. |
Charles Lamb | 'Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and have her nonsense respected. |
Edmond and Jules De Goncourt | That which, perhaps, hears more nonsense than anything in the world, is a picture in a museum. |
George Eliot | Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends? |
Hans Richter | Your damned nonsense can I stand twice or once, but sometimes always, by God, never. |
Joseph Addison | Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense. |
Ralph Waldo Emerson | Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man. |
Samuel Butler | All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Author | Date | Quotation |
Communist Manifesto | 1848 | They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original. (reference) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Title | Author | Quote |
Emma | Austen, Jane | All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the subject, but I believed none of it. |
Through the Looking-Glass | Carroll, Lewis | This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at once towards the Red Queen |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | I do not allow myself to be entangled with nonsense. |
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead | Tom Stoppard | A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | The PAH gene is a single locus with more than 400 identified different mutations, including deletions, insertions, missense mutations, splicing defects, and nonsense mutations. (references) | |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | SEAL, n. A mark impressed upon certain kinds of documents to attest their authenticity and authority. Sometimes it is stamped upon wax, and attached to the paper, sometimes into the paper itself. Sealing, in this sense, is a survival of an ancient custom of inscribing important papers with cabalistic words or signs to give them a magical efficacy independent of the authority that they represent. In the British museum are preserved many ancient papers, mostly of a sacerdotal character, validated by necromantic pentagrams and other devices, frequently initial letters of words to conjure with; and in many instances these are attached in the same way that seals are appended now. As nearly every reasonless and apparently meaningless custom, rite or observance of modern times had origin in some remote utility, it is pleasing to note an example of ancient nonsense evolving in the process of ages into something really useful. Our word "sincere" is derived from sine cero, without wax, but the learned are not in agreement as to whether this refers to the absence of the cabalistic signs, or to that of the wax with which letters were formerly closed from public scrutiny. Either view of the matter will serve one in immediate need of an hypothesis. The initials L.S., commonly appended to signatures of legal documents, mean locum sigillis, the place of the seal, although the seal is no longer used -- an admirable example of conservatism distinguishing Man from the beasts that perish. The words locum sigillis are humbly suggested as a suitable motto for the Pribyloff Islands whenever they shall take their place as a sovereign State of the American Union. |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Nonsense" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 99.94% of the time. "Nonsense" is used about 1,628 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 99.94% | 1,627 | 5,109 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 0.06% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 1,628 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "nonsense": a fig for' stuff and nonsense ♦ a pack of nonsense ♦ absolute nonsense ♦ arrant nonsense ♦ babble nonsense ♦ clotted nonsense ♦ flat nonsense ♦ it is nonsense to say so ♦ it is sheer nonsense ♦ make nonsense of ♦ nonsense call ♦ nonsense codon ♦ nonsense correlation ♦ nonsense verse ♦ nonsense verses ♦ pack of nonsense ♦ piece of nonsense ♦ plumb nonsense ♦ rank nonsense ♦ stand no nonsense ♦ stark nonsense ♦ stuff and nonsense ♦ talk nonsense ♦ that's sheer nonsense ♦ the veriest nonsense ♦ utter nonsense. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "nonsense": nonsense-languages, nonsense-maker, nonsense-rhyme, nonsense-word. | |
Ending with "nonsense": art-nonsense, euro-nonsense, incant-nonsense, no-nonsense. | |
Containing "nonsense": heads-down-take-no-nonsense-mindless-boogie. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
no nonsense | 53 |
nonsense | 38 |
no nonsense pantie hose | 29 |
nonsense poem | 13 |
no nonsense hosiery | 5 |
the poetry of nonsense | 5 |
nonsense words | 5 |
nonsense quote | 4 |
nonsense song | 4 |
fort nonsense | 3 |
bible nonsense | 2 |
no nonsense hose | 2 |
nonsense verse | 2 |
logical nonsense | 2 |
in lingo monotonous nonsense synonym | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "nonsense"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | apekool, absurditeit (absurdity, rubbish). (various references) | |
Albanian | ngatërresë (complication, confusion, embroilment, entanglement, hindrance, huddle, imbroglio, intricacy, mess, mix, moil, muddle, Mull, network, nodus, nuisance, obstruction, quarrel, Ravel, razzle, razzle-dazzle, toss), marrëzi (amentia, fatuity, fatuousness, Folly, foolishness, ineptitude, insanity, lunacy, madness, silliness, stupidity, tomfoolery), gomarllëk (foolishness, rubbish, stupidity), gjepura (apple sauce, balderdash, baloney, blague, blether, boloney, bosh, bunco, buncombe, bunk, bunko, claptrap, crap, drivel, drool, eyewash, fiddledeedee, fiddle-faddle, fiddlesticks, flam, flannel, flapdoodle, flimflam, flubdub, footle, galimatias, gammon, hog-wash, hokum, humbug, jazz, jiggery pokery, moonshine, palaver, piffle, poppycock, punk, rot, rubbish, stuff and nonsense, taradiddle, tosh, trash, twaddle, vacuity, waffle, wish-wash), budallallëk (crassitude, density, Folly, foolery, foolishness, imbecility, inanition, inanity, opaqueness, tomfoolery), absurditet (absurdity, ineptitude). (various references) | |
Arabic | كلام فارغ (balderdash, bosh, bunk, drivel, empty talk, fiddle-faddle, idle talk, poppycock, prattle, twaddle), هراء (balderdash, baloney, boloney, bosh, bull, bunk, claptrap, drivel, fiddle-faddle, flapdoodle, fudge, hocus pocus, humbug, moonshine, piffle, piffling, ramble, rigmarole, rot, rubbish, slush, tosh, trash, trumpery, wind), لا قيمة له (insubstantial, paltry, refuse), حماقة (blindness, brainlessness, brutishness, crap, doltishness, dumbness, emptiness, fatuity, fatuousness, fat-wittedness, feeblemindedness, folly, foolery, gaffe, hankey-pankey, hanky panky, idiocy, imbecility, insanity, rot, silliness, stupidity, thick-wittedness, tomfoolery, unwisdom, weak-mindedness), تفاه (silliness, smallness, tommyrot), توافه (trivia), سفاسف. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | глупости (all my eye, applesauce, balderdash, baloney, blague, blah, bleat, blether, boloney, bosh, bull, buncombe, cod, crap, drivel, eyewash, fiddle-faddle, fiddlesticks, flapdoodle, footle, fudge, guff, gup, hokum, humbug, jiggery pokery, junk, kibosh, monkey business, monkeybusiness, nuts, piffle, poppycock, punk, rhubarb, rot, rubbish, shucks, slush, stuff and nonsense, tack, tommy rot, truck, trumpery), глупост (density, fatuity, fatuousness, fiddlestick, foolishness, foppery, hokum, inanity, ineptitude, insanity, puerility, silliness, simplicity, stupidity, stupidness, thick skull, trash, unreason, unwisdom), нелепости, нелепост (absurdity, fatuity, fatuousness, inanity, incongruity, ineptitude), абсурдност (absurdity, absurdness, ineptitude, unreason), абсурд (absurdity), безсмислен (absurd, aimless, futile, inane, insensate, inutile, meaningless, mindless, needless, nonsensical, pointless, preposterous, purposeless, senseless, sorry, stupid, tomfool, unmeaning, vacuous, vain), безсмислица (jabberwocky). (various references) | |
Chinese | 胡话, 無聊 (bored), 廢話 (rubbish, superfluous words), 屁話 . (various references) | |
Czech | nesmysl (absurdity, balderdash, bunk, nuts, rot, rubbish, tripe, trumpery), pitomina, absurdnost (absurdity). (various references) | |
Danish | nonsens-mutation (nonsense mutation), nonsense-codon (nonsense codon), vroevleopkald (nonsense call), tRNA-suppressor (nonsense suppressor, tRNA suppressor), meningsloese stavelser (nonsense syllables), chikaneopkald (nonsense call). (various references) | |
Dutch | zever (saliva), onzin (rubbish), nonsens, gekheid (craziness, insanity, lunacy, madness). (various references) | |
Esperanto | sensencaĵo. (various references) | |
Farsi | یاوه (Absurd, Babble, Tattle), مهمل (Preposterous, Trash, Trashy, Waggish), مزخرف (Absurd, Baloney, Ludicrous, Nonsensical, Slag, Tawdry, Trashy), حرف پوچ (Moonshine), خارج ازمنطق , بیمعنی (Senseless, Vacuous). (various references) | |
Finnish | turhaa jaaritusta (idle talk), pötypuhe, pöty (rubbish), hölynpöly. (various references) | |
French | fadaises (piece of nonsense), absurdité. (various references) | |
German | Unsinn (absurdism, bull, drivel, flapdoodle, garbage, hooey, mischief, moonshine, nonsenses, rubbish, shucks, tomfoolery), quatsch (balderdash, baloney, bilge, blah, bull, bunk, bunkum, fiddle-faddle, flubdub, garbage, gibberish, hogwash, hooey, jabberwocky, malarkey, poppycock, rubbish, shucks, trash, twaddle), blödsinn (bunkum, garbage, imbecility, monkeyshine, rubbish, stupid tricks, tomfoolery). (various references) | |
Greek | κουταμάρα (stupidity), βλακείες (rubbish), βλακεία (fatuity, foolishness, goofiness, idiocy, muff, sheepishness, silliness, stupidity, stupidness, tomfoolery), βλακίες, μωρολογίεσ, παραλογισμόσ (aberration, absurdity, absurdness, irrationality, mental aberration, paralogism, preposterousness, senselessness, unreasonableness), αρλούμπα, ανοησίεσ (balderdash, claptrap, fiddlesticks, hooey, moonshine, piffle, rubbish, stuff, twaddle), ανοησίες (gibberish), ανοησία (baloney, bunk, fatuity, fatuousness, foolery, foolishness, fooolishness, immunity, inanity, mush, nonsensicalness, piffle, puerility, rot, shenanighan, silliness, tommy rot). (various references) | |
Hebrew | ל"' (argot, dialect, patter, prattle), שטויות (applesauce, balderdash, baloney, bunk, drivel, moonshine, nuts, rot, rubbish, stuff and nonsense, tommyrot, tosh, trash, trumpery), שטות (absurdity, fiddle-faddle, foolishness, insanity, madness, piffle, tomfoolery), "בלים (foolishness, piffle), "באי (exaggeration), "ברים בעלמא (small talk), "ברי "בל (balderdash, hot air). (various references) | |
Hungarian | képtelenség (absurdity, bushwa, impossibility, inability, incapacitation, incongruity, ineptitude, ridiculousness, rubbish). (various references) | |
Icelandic | fjarstæða (absurdity, rubbish). (various references) | |
Indonesian | omong-kosong (balony, bosh, flim-flam, tosh), dongeng (fairy tale, legend). (various references) | |
Italian | nonsenso (absurdism, footle). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | '"無稽 (absurdity, preposterous), 戯言 (joke, silly things). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | "うた" (birth, end, exaggerated beyond recognition, lies, nativity, wild talk), はちゃめちゃ, よまい"と (grumbling, muttering), よしなし"と (trivial thing), よた (good-for-nothing fellow, idle gossip), むちゃ (absurd, absurdity, excessive, rash, unreasonable), むけい (abstract, immaterial, intangible, moral, spiritual, unfounded, unsupported), べ" (foolish tale), "うとうむけい (absurdity, preposterous), ぎ'" (falsehood, joke, silly things), でほう い (free flow, random talk), でたらめ (haphazard, irresponsible utterance, nonsensical, random, unsystematic), ざれ"と (a joke, joke, silly things, wanton sporting), ね"と (talking in sleep), ナンセンス , ノンセンス , たわ"と (joke, silly things), むいみ (no meaning). (various references) | |
Korean | 난센스 (no-nonsense). (various references) | |
Manx | neuhappey, boiraneys (annoyance, bluster, brawl, discord, disturbance, harassment, tumult), boghtynid (jargon, need, poverty, shabbiness). (various references) | |
Papiamen | nònsèns. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | onsensenay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | absurdo (absurd, absurdity, bloodcurdling, foolish, ill-placed, impertinent, incongruous, inept, irrational, ludicrous, monstrous, nonsensical, preposterous, ragtime, ridiculous, rubbish, unreason), disparate (absurdity, balderdash, blather, blether, bloomer, bosh, bull, bunk, disparate, fiddle-de-dee, fiddlestick, flapdoodle, flummery, foolery, foolishness, fribble, fudge, guff, gup, hot, howler, moonshine, mush, piffle, punk, simplicity, skittle, tomfoolery, tommy rot, tripe, tump, twaddle, unreason, unwisdom). (various references) | |
Romanian | nonsens (absurdity, flapdoodle), prostii (apple-sauce, balderdash, bosh, drivel, eyewash, fiddle-faddle, fiddlesticks, fudge, gammon, moonshine, mush, poppy-cock, rats, rubbish, skittles, stuff and nonsense, tosh, trash, tripe), fugi de-aici, aiurea (abroad, apple-sauce, elsewhere, fiddlededee, fiddlesticks, foolish, phooey, stow it, you don't say so), absurditate (absurdity, blue dahlia, fallacy, foolishness, ineptitude, irrationality, stupidity, unreason, unreasonableness), absurditãţi. (various references) | |
Russian | абсурд (absurdity, rubbish). (various references) | |
Scottish | t bhastal (tedious nonsense), breislich (talk nonsense). (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | koještarija (baloney, bilge, buncombe, bunk, bunko, cobbler, crap, humbug, moonshine, rigmarole, rot), besmislica (applesauce, balderdash, blah, blether, bosh, bull, bunkum, double dutch, double talk, extravagance, fiddlestick, flubdub, mush, pointlessness, ruck, tosh). (various references) | |
Spanish | tontería (dispensation, farce, folly, foolery, foolishness, jiggery pokery, silliness, trumpery), pamema (absurdism, footle), majaderías (poppycock), huevada (crazy idea, nest of eggs), disparates (a load of piffle, absurdities, balderdash, humbug, jazz), despropósitos, desatinos. (various references) | |
Swedish | dumheter (all my eye, all my eyes, crap, fiddlesticks, rubbish). (various references) | |
Thai | ง่ายๆ และตรงไปตรงมา (no-nonsense). (various references) | |
Turkish | abuk sabuk (farcical, incoherent, nonsensical). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | нісенітниця (applesauce, balderdash, bilge, blah, bosh, drivel, flam, flubdub, haver, jiggery pokery, shucks, slaver, tommyrot), навіженство (extravagance), абсурд, безглузді вчинки, безглуздя (bull, humbug, obtuseness, obtusity), пусте (nothing, nothingism), дурна поведінка (foolery), дурниця (absurdity, absurdness, applesauce, balderdash, ballyhoo, bosh, buncombe, froth, humbug, mush, piffle, poppycock, porridge, rigmarole, rubbish, sappiness, shucks, slum, trash, tripe), дрібниця (bagatelle, barley-straw, fillip, minim, non essential, nothing, nothingism, nought, trifle, triviality, whim-wham). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | lời nói vô nghĩa (bosh, galimatias), lời nói vô lý (extravagance, extravagancy), lời nói c n, lời nói bậy, h nh động ngu dại (foolery), h nh động bậy bạ, chuyện vô lý (rubbish). (various references) | |
Welsh | rwtsh (rubbish), lol (balderdash, bosh), ffwlbri (bosh, fudge, tomfoolery), ffiloreg (balderdash, rigamarole), cybo+l (rubbish). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | alogia, deliramentum, gera, gerrenos, noga, nugaces, nugas, somnium. (various references) |
| Late Latin | 300-700 | burra. (various references) |
| Danish | 1000-Modern | fjas. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "nonsense": nonsenses. (additional references) | |
| |
"Nonsense" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: consense, konsepsi, nonesense, nonsence, nonsensed, nyonsais. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "e-e-n-n-n-o-s-s" | |
-1 letter: oneness. | |
-3 letters: nenes, neons, nones, noses, sense, sones. | |
-4 letters: eons, eses, nene, neon, ness, noes, none, nose, ones, oses, seen, sees, sene, sone, sons. | |
-5 letters: ens, eon, ess, nee, nos, oes, one, ons, ose, see, sen, son, sos. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-e-n-n-n-o-s-s" | |
+1 letter: nonsenses. | |
+3 letters: nonresponse, nonsciences. | |
+4 letters: nonessential, nonfeasances, noninterests, nonnecessity, nonpasserine, nonresidents, nonresponses, nonsensitive, nonsentences, unwontedness, wantonnesses. | |
+5 letters: belongingness, condescension, connectedness, consentaneous, contentedness, donnishnesses, inconsistence, ingeniousness, ingenuousness, ingrownnesses, knowingnesses, nonessentials, nonexistences, nonpersistent, nonresidences, nonresistance, nonresponders, nonresponsive, nonuniqueness, nothingnesses, ongoingnesses, sonneteerings, unboundedness, unsoundnesses. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Images: Photo Album 8. Quotations: Familiar | 9. Quotations: Historic 10. Quotations: Fiction 11. Quotations: Non-fiction 12. Usage Frequency | 13. Expressions 14. Expressions: Internet 15. Translations: Modern 16. Translations: Ancient | 17. Derivations 18. Anagrams 19. Bibliography |
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