make sense
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file) Audio (Mid-Atlantic US): (file)
Verb
[edit]make sense (third-person singular simple present makes sense, present participle making sense, simple past and past participle made sense)
- (intransitive, idiomatic) To be sensible, coherent, reasonable.
- Synonym: add up
- 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, “The Winner Takes It All”:
- I was in your arms
Thinking I belonged there
I figured it made sense
Building me a fence
- 2002, Frou Frou, “Psychobabble”, in Details[1]:
- Of course you're not coming over / Snap out of it / You're not making any sense
- 2025 February 19, Paul Clifton, “I am absolutely committed to reforming the railway”, in RAIL, number 1029, page 41:
- Hendy has come out as something of an evangelist for discontinuous electrification. For Waterloo-Exeter, this could make real sense on a route where the high capital cost of wiring or third rail all the way to Devon would be prohibitive. But what about his vocal support for it on East West Rail, which is effectively a brand new line?
- (intransitive, idiomatic, with of) To decipher or understand.
- Synonym: make head or tail of
- Can you make sense of her handwriting?
- (informal) Used to express interest or desire in something; to be pleasing or beneficial; to work, be operative, or be advantageous to.
- Maybe we should take a break. I mean, our relationship just isn't making much sense anymore.
- (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.
Descendants
[edit]- → Dutch: sense maken
- → Icelandic: meika sens
- → Swedish: mejka sense
Translations
[edit]to be coherent
to decipher, understand
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