Word.ws English Dictionary

does not compute

does not compute phrase: that does not make sense.

Phrase

does not compute

  1. (humorous) That does not make sense.

Origin of does not compute

A phrase commonly uttered by robots in science-fiction stories. The first recorded source is the television show My Living Doll from 1964.

Questions about does not compute

What does does not compute mean?
Does not compute means that does not make sense.
What part of speech is does not compute?
Does not compute is a phrase.

Words near does not compute in the dictionary

  1. does it up brown
  2. does justice
  3. does lunch
  4. does Macy's tell Gimbel's
  5. does more harm than good
  6. does not compute
  7. does nothing
  8. does numbers
  9. does off
  10. does one's bit
  11. does one's business

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: does not compute (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-does not compute.wav.

Cite this entry: “does not compute.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/does_not_compute. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.