575: nonsensical Jul 5, 2016

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English can seem nonsensical and unstructured language with its many exceptions and inconsistent spelling. Any way you look at it, this would seem true. In fact, not only does 'nonsensical' embody this as an adjective, but is a wonderful example. Any prefix, such as 'non' used to negate a word, has to be attached to some root, but alas, there is no such word 'sensical'. The reason for this is that the concept of 'nonsense' took on rather a life of its own, and the suffix 'ical' was added to make the adjectival form, whereas the adjectival for of 'sense', 'sensible' was taken directly from the Latin word 'sensibilis'.

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