Nonsense

Nonsense, and absurdity is a sense of logic and dissolved or grossly incorrect facts - sometimes (intentionally ) jokingly. The property of such is called folly.

An act or statement can be rated as nonsense ( "Do not talk nonsense! ", " Do not be silly !"). This can be a warning, a devaluation, or rhetorical argument.

Word field

Partial expressions are used synonymously (mainly from dialects ) are: folly, absurdity, nonsense, port cheese, Humbug, madness, Kladderadatsch, tosh, Larifari, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, balderdash, nonsense, foolishness.

The various synonymous expressions have partially slight differences in meaning and different evaluative connotations ( overtones ). So folly and madness are provided with the aspect of absurdity, what a particular increase suggests, and even can turn it into something positive (but funny performance). As bullshit was formerly known a severe mental illness: "Nonsense, the greatest degree of morbid mental retardation, as is used to partly innate in cretinism and idiocy, partly acquired as end-stage manifold mental illnesses of paralytic insanity and as a result of brain shrinkage in the higher old age ( senile dementia ) observation comes. " Imbecility have the connotation of the inability or lack of thinking power. In an outdated classification of mental retardation, idiocy called the most serious degree of cognitive disability. This system is out of use, because the term colloquially - similar bullshit - gradually became a dirty word.

Nonsense and poetry

The linguist Noam Chomsky referred to the sentence " Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. " ( German: " Colorless green ideas sleep angry. " ) As an example of a nonsensical, but syntactically grammatical sentence. Logically offers no sense, because ideas are not green and not sleep; what is green, can not be colorless, and Mad sleeping eliminated. In poetry, however, such a sentence well have a meaning. Nonsense is characterized therefore not necessarily due to the lack of sense. As a metaphor, there could be figuratively " colorless green ideas ". The sentence is replaced by a new meaning.

In Proverbs, the word seems to be hardly discussed, because in German Wanders proverbs glossary (5 volumes), there are only two examples (eg The nonsense sheared the sow and scorches the sheep. ).

Quotes

Harry Frankfurt claims in his book On Bullshit "... bullshit is a Greater enemy of the truth than lies are" ( German: "Nonsense is a greater enemy of truth than are lies ").

In Schiller's Maid of Orleans Taobot says: "Nonsense, you are victorious, and I must perish ."