"nonsense word" meaning in English

See nonsense word in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: nonsense words [plural]
Etymology: nonsense + word Etymology templates: {{com|en|nonsense|word}} nonsense + word Head templates: {{en-noun}} nonsense word (plural nonsense words)
  1. A neologised word that does not have a given meaning, or that has been invented without any etymological sense. Related terms: neologism, non-word, nonce word, protologism, pseudoword Translations (type of word): pseudosana (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-nonsense_word-en-noun-LI7R3CJh Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for nonsense word meaning in English (1.5kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "nonsense",
        "3": "word"
      },
      "expansion": "nonsense + word",
      "name": "com"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "nonsense + word",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nonsense words",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "nonsense word (plural nonsense words)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1983, Michael E. Adelstein, Wendell Keats Sparrow, Business communications",
          "text": "George Bernard Shaw's classic joke about English spelling is that his nonsense word ghoti should be pronounced fish. He explained: gh = like the gh in cough = fo = like the o in women = i ti = like the ti in nation = sh ghoti = fish.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A neologised word that does not have a given meaning, or that has been invented without any etymological sense."
      ],
      "id": "en-nonsense_word-en-noun-LI7R3CJh",
      "links": [
        [
          "neologise",
          "neologise"
        ],
        [
          "meaning",
          "meaning"
        ],
        [
          "invent",
          "invent"
        ],
        [
          "etymological",
          "etymological"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "neologism"
        },
        {
          "word": "non-word"
        },
        {
          "word": "nonce word"
        },
        {
          "word": "protologism"
        },
        {
          "word": "pseudoword"
        }
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "type of word",
          "word": "pseudosana"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "nonsense word"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "nonsense",
        "3": "word"
      },
      "expansion": "nonsense + word",
      "name": "com"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "nonsense + word",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "nonsense words",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "nonsense word (plural nonsense words)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "neologism"
    },
    {
      "word": "non-word"
    },
    {
      "word": "nonce word"
    },
    {
      "word": "protologism"
    },
    {
      "word": "pseudoword"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English compound terms",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1983, Michael E. Adelstein, Wendell Keats Sparrow, Business communications",
          "text": "George Bernard Shaw's classic joke about English spelling is that his nonsense word ghoti should be pronounced fish. He explained: gh = like the gh in cough = fo = like the o in women = i ti = like the ti in nation = sh ghoti = fish.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A neologised word that does not have a given meaning, or that has been invented without any etymological sense."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "neologise",
          "neologise"
        ],
        [
          "meaning",
          "meaning"
        ],
        [
          "invent",
          "invent"
        ],
        [
          "etymological",
          "etymological"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "type of word",
      "word": "pseudosana"
    }
  ],
  "word": "nonsense word"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.