Definition
In law, nonsense refers to unintelligible matter appearing in a written instrument — such as a contract, deed, or will — that is incapable of being understood or given legal effect. Unlike ambiguity, which admits of multiple possible meanings, nonsense admits of none. A passage is legally nonsense when no coherent legal meaning can be extracted from it, whether because the language is internally contradictory, repugnant to what precedes it, or simply beyond rational interpretation.
The legal treatment of nonsense in instruments turns on a critical distinction:
1. Grammatical nonsense — language that is grammatically correct but unintelligible or absurd in meaning. Here, courts will not selectively reject words to rescue sense from the remainder; the passage must be taken as it stands, because any selective deletion could manufacture meaning the parties never intended.
2. Repugnancy nonsense — language that is nonsense only because it contradicts or is repugnant to prior, sensible language in the same instrument. Here, the prior sensible matter controls and the repugnant addition is disregarded. The rule is that what came first and made sense survives; the nonsensical repugnancy is rejected.
The overarching interpretive goal is to construe the instrument so the whole may stand if possible, but where a portion cannot be saved without distorting the rest, that portion fails.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Words or language with no meaning or pattern; something illogical, silly, or lacking reason or value; also a genre of surreal poetry.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): That which has no sense or conveys no intelligible ideas; absurdity; also trifles or things of no importance.
The legal meaning of nonsense is narrower and more technical than the everyday usage. In ordinary speech, nonsense covers a broad range — the absurd, the foolish, the untrue, the whimsical. In law, nonsense is a precise condition of a written instrument: language that cannot be given any operative legal meaning. The consequence is not mere dismissal as silly but a specific set of interpretive rules that determine what survives and what fails in the document. A legally nonsensical clause is not merely unpersuasive; it is void.
Common Confusion
Nonsense is sometimes conflated with ambiguity, but the distinction matters enormously in document construction. An ambiguous term has two or more plausible meanings and invites extrinsic evidence and judicial interpretation to resolve which meaning applies. A nonsensical term has no plausible meaning; it is beyond interpretation, not between interpretations. The practical difference: ambiguity triggers a process of construction; nonsense terminates it for that portion of the instrument. Nonsense is also distinct from a mere mistake or scrivener's error, which courts may correct by reformation where the parties' true intent is clear from other evidence.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in contract law, wills and estates, or deed construction will encounter nonsense as a term of art primarily in older cases and treatises dealing with the canons of construction. Several research traps exist.
First, the grammatical-nonsense versus repugnancy-nonsense distinction is often collapsed in secondary sources. Finding cases that properly distinguish the two is essential when the issue is whether words can be dropped to save an instrument. The rule against rejecting words (from grammatical nonsense) and the rule permitting rejection of repugnant matter operate in opposite directions, and conflating them produces wrong conclusions.
Second, the corpus of cases applying these rules is heavily historical. Most modern disputes over unintelligible contract language are litigated under ambiguity doctrines, mistake, or failure of essential terms — frameworks that have largely absorbed what earlier courts called nonsense. Researchers should not assume silence in modern reporters means the doctrine is dead; it may simply be re-labeled.
Third, the Norman French digression appearing in the 1st edition of Black's — discussing modes of pronunciation preserved by legal officials — is an editorial artifact that crept into the nonsense entry and has no doctrinal relevance to the term. Researchers consulting first-edition Black's should be aware the entry is textually garbled at that point.
Fourth, the Salkeld citation (1 Salk. 324) in Bouvier's is a real reference to Salkeld's Reports, an early English reporter. Researchers tracing the historical roots of the grammatical-nonsense rule to primary authority should begin there and in the broader canon of English construction cases predating codification of interpretive rules.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries present a consistent doctrinal picture, with useful elaboration across sources. Black's 1st and 2nd editions offer the bare-bones definition — unintelligible matter in a written agreement or will — without unpacking the interpretive consequences. Bouvier's is the most substantive, articulating the whole-instrument canon and the two-part distinction between grammatical nonsense and repugnancy nonsense, with a citation to primary authority. Rapalje & Lawrence largely tracks Bouvier's formulation, emphasizing that grammatical correctness does not save nonsense and that repugnancy to prior sense results in the prior matter controlling.
No source dictionary adequately addresses the relationship between nonsense and modern doctrines of ambiguity or mistake, which is the primary gap for contemporary researchers. None of the historical sources engage with the evidentiary question of when extrinsic evidence is admissible to illuminate apparently nonsensical language — a live issue in modern contract disputes. Historians of legal language will also note that the treatment of nonsense in these dictionaries reflects an era when strict literalism in document construction was more dominant; modern purposivist and contextual approaches may reach different results on the same facts without using the word nonsense at all.
Jurisdictional Note
The common law rules on nonsense in instruments were inherited uniformly across American jurisdictions from English practice, but their application varies with each state's approach to contract and will construction more broadly. Civil law jurisdictions and states with heavily codified probate statutes may handle unintelligible testamentary language under specific statutory provisions rather than the common law nonsense doctrine.