Learn English – word that means nonsensical question

single-word-requests

A friend of mine and I were joking about questions that are complete nonsense. Here are some examples:

True or false: How tall is the Empire State Building?

Is it further to Pittsburgh or by train?

How tall do you weigh?

I called them nonsensical questions. My friend said he thought there was a more descriptive word for them, but could not remember the word. Is there a word for questions that are complete nonsense? I am dubious of his claim.

Edit: I just suggested the word balderdash, but he said that is not the word he was trying to remember. He says he is thinking of a word that specifically implies a question is nonsense. It would not be used to describe other types of sentences, like statements.

Edit 2: Someone requested that I add the following question: "Which weighs more, a pound of bricks or a pound of feathers?" This question is a trick question, but not nonsensical. A similar question that is closer to being nonsensical would be

Which weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?

Comparing the weight of gold to the weight of feathers is ambiguous. Both bricks and feathers are typically weighed using the standard scale. Gold, on the other hand, is typically weighed using the Troy scale. A troy pound weighs less than a standard avoirdupois pound. So, the question does not have as straightforward an answer due to the ambiguity of which scale is being used to weigh each.

Best Answer

Your original examples are called category mistakes:

A category mistake, or category error, or categorical mistake, or mistake of category, is a semantic or ontological error in which things belonging to a particular category are presented as if they belong to a different category, or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property. - wikipedia

The confusion arising from the two types of pounds is a form of 'overloading' or syntactic ambiguity that might be considered a very narrow case of polysemy, with the sentence itself being an example of zeugma.

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