nonnonsense

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A form of non-nonsense — Not nonsense.

Scrabble 11

Meanings

nounnonnonsense (uncountable)
  1. rareuncountablerare spelling of non-nonsense.

    > [snip nonsense] / [nonnonsense reinstated]

    2002 May 8, Robert Myers, “US-TX-Austin: Senior Software Engineer (19471312)”, in austin.jobs (Usenet)
    5 more examples

    This is a highly technical term that is used by philosophers to talk nonsense, and I didn’t think what he was saying was at all nonsense. But I was not quite sure what kind of nonnonsense it was!

    1968, Psychological Issues, volume 6, page 127

    Rene has played wonderfully a nonnonsense security chief, comic foil to Shirmerman but has also convincingly played a betrayer.

    1998 February 16, Daniel Tropea, “DS9's real strength - imho”, in alt.tv.star-trek.ds9 (Usenet)

    A defective sentence like / *Shakespeare writed gooder than Fletcher / has a recoverable unified meaning despite its ungrammaticality (in each case morphotactic to lexical realization errors). / With this reservation, what distinguishes nonsense from nonnonsense?

    2001, Richard Gaskin, editor, Grammar in Early Twentieth-Century Philosophy, Routledge, published 2002, →ISBN

    I have picked up this Teach Yourself Astrology by Jeff Mayo. It seems like a good nonnonsense book.

    2001 July 13, Deb Shanker, “Vajpayee`s stars brighter: astrologer”, in soc.culture.indian (Usenet)

    If you should have forgotten, here comes a remainder: Your idiotic nonsense is idiotic nonsense, and nonnonsense was, by and large, not to be seen from you during the last 10 years.

    2014 September 29, Ralf Bader, “Irrational numbers have no representation as decimal fractions.”, in sci.math (Usenet)

Origin

  1. Proto-Indo-European*né
  2. Proto-Germanic*ne
  3. Proto-Indo-European*ís?
  4. Proto-Indo-European*h₁óynos
  5. Proto-Germanic*ainaz
  6. Proto-Germanic*nainaz
  7. Proto-West Germanic*nain
  8. Old Englishnān
  9. Middle Englishnon
  10. Old Englishnān
  11. Old Englishnān-
  12. Middle Englishnon-
  13. Englishnon-
  14. Proto-Indo-European*sent-
  15. Proto-Italic*sentiō
  16. Latinsentiō
  17. Latinsēnsu
  18. Proto-Germanic*sinnaz
  19. Frankish*sinn
  20. Vulgar Latin*sennus
  21. Old Frenchsens
  22. Middle Englishsense
  23. Englishsense
  24. Englishnonsense
  25. Englishnonnonsense

From non- + nonsense.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

nonnonsense. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nonnonsense

MLA

“nonnonsense.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nonnonsense. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “nonnonsense,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/nonnonsense.

Source: nonnonsense on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.