1647 J. Gauden Hinc Illæ Lachrymæ 4 One Gorton, another Non-sense Anabaptisticall Preacher, forsooth, and a most base fellow.

1742 H. Fielding Joseph Andrews II. iii. xi. 161 The Mistress of the House..told him, ‘she hoped his Honour would pardon her Husband, who was a very nonsense Man, for the sake of his poor Family.’ View more context for this quotation

1757 S. Foote Author i. 17 You are a nonsense Man, and I won't agree to any such Thing.

1871 G. MacDonald At Back of North Wind xxv. 231 There's baby fast asleep! Oh, what a nonsense baby it is—to sleep so much!

1957 F. H. C. Crick et al. in Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 43 418 We shall assume that there are certain sequences of three nucleotides with which an amino acid can be associated and certain others for which this is not possible. Using the metaphors of coding, we say that some of the 64 triplets make sense and some make nonsense.]

1961 Ann. Rev. Biochem. 30 651 An alteration in any base pair by a mutagen raises the possibility of a class of so-called nonsense mutations.

1964 G. H. Haggis et al. Introd. Molecular Biol. xii. 318 They then calculated that the sixty-four triplets could be divided..into two classes, with twenty meaningful triplets in one class and forty-four nonsense triplets in the other.

1974 Encycl. Brit. Micropædia IV. 464/2 It is now known that there may be several codes for one amino acid and that there are nonsense codes that do not code anything.

1992 Cambr. Encycl. Human Evol. (1994) i. i. 12/3 If the mutation is to a stop codon, such as UGA, then the growing amino acid chain will be cut off—a nonsense mutation.

1874 Atlantic Monthly Sept. 372/2 We like its free range—from the Iliad to the children's Nonsense Book.

2001 Guardian (Nexis) 20 Apr. Godfrey [suggested] to John Lennon an animated version of his nonsense book, A Spaniard in the Works.

1851 Harper's Mag. Aug. 378 We strolled in the evening through the fields and woods..as I poured forth the popular love and nonsense poetry of the time.

1899 New Cent. Rev. Jan. 30 What it is that constitutes successful nonsense poetry it is impossible to say, but all can distinguish the true article when they see it.

1938 L. MacNeice Mod. Poetry x. 182 Lear's nonsense poetry is the last flare-up of romanticism.

1998 M. Delville Amer. Prose Poem iii. vi. 189 The nonsense poetry of French Dadaist Tristan Tzara.

1885 Mind 10 457 The saving of time effected in re-learning 104 nonsense syllables after various intervals.

1996 Science 13 Dec. 1849 Eight-month-old infants exposed for only 2 min to unbroken strings of nonsense syllables (for example, ‘bidakupado..’) are able to detect the difference.

1846 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Oct. 500/2 He sang one of those charming little Tiranas, to which he improvised the usual nonsense words as he proceeded.

1919 J. B. Watson Psychol. ix. 336 Nonsense words or syllables are made by separating two consonants with a vowel as ver, gax and moc.

1954 J. R. R. Tolkien Fellowship of Ring i. vi. 130 Out of a long string of nonsense-words (or so they seemed) the voice rose up loud and clear.

1990 Internat. Rev. Appl. Linguistics 28 296 A series of experiments on nonsense words—some pronounceable, some unpronounceable for particular language speakers (e.g. sland vs. ndasl).

1681 R. Baxter Church-hist. Govt. Bishops (new ed.) xii. §170. 384 They would have so tost and torn, and sensed and nonsensed the Scripture, that they would have made it quite another thing.

1869 R. F. Burton Explor. Highlands Brazil II. xxiv. 355 M. Millivet..has grammaticized and nonsensed the word to ‘Santa Sé’.

1896 G. B. Shaw in Sat. Rev. 24 Oct. 441/2 At the Haymarket all this is nonsensed.

2002 Yorks. Post (Nexis) 28 Feb. Manager Moyes has nonsensed reports that he has been making a renewed effort to buy USA striker Brian McBride.

1822 M. Edgeworth Let. 30 May (1971) 404 We have given most elegant repasts as I shall have the honor of describing to you soon when we are all together nonsenseing round Lucys sofa.

1890 J. R. Lowell Oriental Apologue in Writings 143 Each with unwonted zeal..Pished, pshawed, poohed, horribled, bahed, jeered, sneered, flouted, Sniffed, nonsensed, infideled, fudged.

1909 R. A. Wason Happy Hawkins 67 I nonsensed a while, tryin' to get her to laugh an' cut up, but not her.

1994 Herald (Glasgow) (Nexis) 25 July Motoring along in the fog we nonsensed for hours on women.