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make sense

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
(Redirected from make sense of)

English

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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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.
    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 (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
    • 2002, Frou Frou (lyrics and music), “Psychobabble”, in Details[1]:
      Of course you're not coming over / Snap out of it / You're not making any sense
  2. (intransitive, idiomatic, with of) To decipher or understand.
    Synonym: make head or tail of
    Can you make sense of her handwriting?
  3. (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.
  4. (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

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  • Dutch: sense maken
  • Icelandic: meika sens
  • Swedish: mejka sense

Translations

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