'Nonsense' was coined in English in the 1610s — unusually, it was built here, not borrowed from Latin or French.
Words or language having no meaning or conveying no intelligible ideas; foolish or unacceptable behavior; (adjective) denoting a gene mutation producing a stop codon; (exclamation) expressing dismissal of something as foolish.
An English formation, coined in the 17th century, from the Latin prefix 'non-' (not) and the word 'sense,' which arrived via Old French 'sens' from Latin 'sensus' (feeling, perception, meaning, understanding), the past participle noun of 'sentire' (to feel, to perceive). 'Sentire' derives from PIE *sent- (to head for, to go, to feel one's way), which also produced German 'Sinn' (sense, mind, meaning) and 'sinnen' (to ponder). The compound 'nonsense' is an English invention — not borrowed from Latin or French but assembled
English has a celebrated tradition of literary nonsense — writing that is deliberately meaningless or absurd yet follows internal rules of grammar and sound. Edward Lear ('The Owl and the Pussycat,' 1871) and Lewis Carroll ('Jabberwocky,' 1871) are the masters of the genre. Carroll's 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe' is grammatically perfect English with invented words — proving that 'nonsense' and 'meaningless' are not the same thing. Nonsense can