Word.ws English Dictionary

nonsense word

nonsense word noun: a neologised word that does not have a given meaning, or that has been invented without any etymological sense.

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.
    • 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.1983, Michael E. Adelstein, Wendell Keats Sparrow, Business communications

Forms of nonsense word

pluralnonsense words

Origin of nonsense word

From nonsense + word.

Questions about nonsense word

What does nonsense word mean?
Nonsense word means a neologised word that does not have a given meaning, or that has been invented without any etymological sense.
What part of speech is nonsense word?
Nonsense word is a noun.
What is the plural of nonsense word?
The plural of nonsense word is nonsense words.

Words near nonsense word in the dictionary

  1. nonsensationalistic
  2. nonsense
  3. nonsense mutation
  4. nonsense mutations
  5. nonsense syndrome
  6. nonsense word
  7. nonsense words
  8. nonsense-mediated decay
  9. nonsensed
  10. nonsensely
  11. nonsenses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nonsense word (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.

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