make sense

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, 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?

• (be coherent or reasonable): add up
• (decipher): make head or tail of