make sense

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Archived revision by Rukhabot (talk | contribs) as of 06:53, 1 June 2022.
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English

Pronunciation

  • Audio (AU):(file)
  • Audio (Mid-Atlantic):(file)

Verb

make sense (third-person singular simple present makes sense, present participle making sense, simple past and past participle made sense)

  1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To be sensible, coherent, reasonable.
    The thing doesn’t make sense to me.
    Somehow the combination didn’t make sense, but Cranston took it at face value, whatever that was worth.
    • 1980, ABBA (lyrics and music), “The Winner Takes It All”:
      I was in your arms
      Thinking I belonged there
      I figured it made sense
      Building me a fence
  2. (intransitive, idiomatic, with of) To decipher or understand.
    Can you make sense of her handwriting?
  3. (generally negated, bodybuilding slang) To be in the realm of the ordinary, to be not particularly developed.
    Antonyms: ridiculous, absurd; see also Thesaurus:strapping
    If you want to grow spinal erectors that don’t make sense, you have to do a lot of bent-over compound lifts.

Synonyms

Translations