- nonsense
- nonsense, twaddle, drivel, bunk, balderdash, poppycock, gobbledygook, trash, rot, bull are comparable when they mean something said or proposed which is senseless or absurd.Nonsense is the most general of these terms; it may be referred to action or behavior as well as to utterances or to proposals, and it may imply foolery or hum- buggery as well as absurdity or senselessness{
no throaty oratorical nonsense was there— White
}{she told them she would stand no more of their nonsense
}{then let Esther give up this nonsense of hers!— Deland
}Twaddle applies to silly empty utterance and suggests the speech of persons who know nothing about a subject yet talk or write about it foolishly, verbosely, or artlessly{weary of the twaddle of theorists
}{that reasoning was unadulterated twaddle— Roosevelt
}Drivel implies a flow of such idle, inane, or commonplace talk as might befit an imbecile or an idiot; it is a highly contemptuous term for nonsensical spoken or written utterances{phrases which on the face of them may be platitudinous to a degree approaching drivel— Montague
}{writes endless narcissistic drivel in a stream-of-consciousness and disorganized manner— Deutsch
}Bunk is an equivalent of nonsense and applies especially to an utterance (as a speech, an opinion, or a doctrine) which, though lacking in real worth or substance, either by intent or by the gullibility of those who listen or accept, hits the popular fancy because it is pretentious, plausible, or high-sounding{they denounced the scheme as bunk
}Balderdash and poppycock may apply to confused, turgid, complex utterances that lack or seem to lack sense{a vexing combination of high-flown balderdash . . . and threadbare clichés— Gibbs
}{the Dissertations are a fascinating farrago of the soundest linguistic common sense and the most egregious poppycock— Pyles
}but both words may imply an attempt to mislead or deceive by such utterances{repeats more than once the old and obvious balderdash that the court . . . eschews the deciding of "political questions"— Rodell
}{psychology is the youngest of the sciences, and hence chiefly guesswork, empiricism, hocus-pocus, poppycock— Mencken
}and both may suggest an unwillingness to see sense on the part of the one that uses them{Uncle William, who thinks your views are all poppycock— Glasgow
}{nothing looks stronger or less in need of scrutiny than a commonplace, up to the moment when, having outlived its usefulness, it begins to be called poppycock— Gill
}Gobbledygook is used of wordy unintelligible jargon especially when featuring the obscure or technical verbiage of some special field{the current law is a masterpiece of complexity and gobbledygook, and few will contend that the law is successful at all in distinguishing excess profits from ordinary profits— Magill
}{the all-too-common passion for pseudo-scientific gobbledygook— one of the ill-begotten offspring of excessive specialization— Odegard
}Trash, rot, and bull are applicable to utterances regarded as worthless or confusingly inaccurate or misleading.Trash may stress the empty worthlessness especially of written material{this book is utter trash . . . pure quackery and without scientific standing— Zirkle
}and rot, the user's disbelief or disgust{you are just the sort of woman to believe in that kind of rot— Braddon
}Bull in its more general use may apply to a grotesque or ludicrous blunder in language{in their most telling appearance they are, to make a bull of it, invisible— Liebling
}but often it is a slang term denoting trivial, verbose, and commonly boastful or inaccurate utterance{have no fear of "essay exams," even prefer them, and the instructor must watch out for the fine old custom of writing bull— La Farge
}{sat around shooting the bull
}or facile speech intended to deceive{he said bluntly, "You think I'm givin' you a line o' bull— Harold Sinclair
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
