nonsense words
Made-up verbal garbage
Nonsense words are invented words without established meaning, created for sound rather than sense.
They appear in children's rhymes, linguistic testing, and playful speech: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, jabberwocky, blicket.
Researchers use nonsense words to test reading skills or language acquisition, since subjects can't rely on familiarity.
Lewis Carroll and Dr.
Seuss elevated nonsense words to art.
- macaronic versePoetry mixing two languages
- gibberishUnintelligible speech or writing
- baby talkSimplified speech for infants
- absurd humorComedy rooted in nonsense
- snigletsWords for unnamed phenomena
Lewis Carroll · Dr. Seuss · Jabberwocky · mumbo jumbo · wordplay · double dutch · flapdoodle · dadaism · sound poetry · neologisms · glossolalia · non-words · gobbledygooks · baloney · made-up · balderdash · blather · absurdity
- invented speechgibberish, gobbledygook, double-talk, jabberwocky, mumbo jumbo
- nonsenseabsurd, gibberish, gobbledegook, gobbledygook, ridiculous
- kid comedyknock-knock jokes, potty humor, poop jokes, silly faces, funny faces
- memorizationrote learning, cramming, mnemonics, rehearsal, by heart
- wordplaypun, puns, punning, punny, punster
- light verselimerick, doggerel, light verse, comic verse, humorous poetry
word, sense, nonsense, sensation, sensible, sensitivity, sentimental, consensus, sensual