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What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
- debacle 3y ago"The common meaning of a little used word changed nearly 100 years ago." ...
- rglullis 3y agoSo you'd say that you are completely nonplussed? Because I was so nonplussed by it that I felt it worth sharing here.
- Karellen 3y agoThe fact that this 1930-era additional meaning is being described as "new" makes me think that there might also be another meaning of "new" that I wasn't previously aware of!
- awesomeideas 3y agoYou were around in the time of Shakespeare!? Wow, what was it like back then, hearing the Bard himself use the singular they? <https://archive.is/A8h4J https://archive.is/A8h4J>
- wizzwizz4 3y agoMy current favourite instance of singular 'they' is in the KJV translation of the Book of Job – specifically, the end of chapter 15. The authors used generic 'he' throughout, until they got to a bit they'd have to translate as "his womb". Clearly this was a wee bit radical of a concept for the authors, because they chose instead to write "their belly prepareth deceit". Also, since it's a religious text, this is a slam dunk counterexample for (e.g.) prescriptivist Mormons. Anyone can handwave Shakespeare, but the Inspired Word of God? They have to admit that singular 'they' is grammatical.
- toast0 3y agoI don't know if translations really count as the Word of God. If so, how do we know which translation when they differ?
- djur 3y agoSome churches have the doctrinal position that particular translations were divinely inspired. Indeed, there are people out there who will tell you that the King James Version is the _only_ 100% true and accurate Bible in any language, because God influenced the translators to correct errors in their source material. (Most other churches think this is extremely silly.)
- samatman 3y agoThe antiquity of 'they' as the indefinite singular is well established. "If you do ever figure out whose umbrella this is, do give it back to them, will you?" has always been correct when the identity of the individual (and therefore particulars such as gender) is unknown. As a definite singular, one used to refer to a known person who relates to gender in a specific way, it is rather new. I have no beef whatsoever with this particular linguistic innovation, but let's not pretend that it isn't one.
- Waterluvian 3y agoDon’t ruin it for me! It’s one of my favourite words, but I really have no idea why. Maybe because it’s just so odd.
- vasco 3y agoI'm way more nonplussed about this than you, I don't really think it's that special.
- mbork_pl 3y ago> It’s one of my favourite words Wait, shouldn't it be the second one, right after _petrichor_?
- wongarsu 3y agoA this point I'm just waiting for a Webster article how some people understand "one of" to mean "the only" instead of "a member of the set of". This seems to be getting more common
- mbork_pl 3y agoGood point, stupid me!
- Waterluvian 3y agoIn my opinion, that's a very ugly word for such a beautiful smell.
- mbork_pl 3y agoWhat's ugly about "petrichor"???
- Waterluvian 3y agoMy opinion, of course. But it’s not pleasant looking or sounding.
- haunter 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word
- ryan-duve 3y agoThis was one of my favorite "word of the day" entries, a word every speaker tries to work into their speech, at Toastmasters. The person who introduced it gave the two definitions and then basically said "it's the only word I know that means its opposite" or something to that effect. It got liberal use in every speech, including mine, and I still don't feel comfortable using it correctly.
- jawns 3y agoMerriam-Webster has its own entry about just that topic: words that are their own antonyms! https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/words-own-opposites https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/words-own-opposites
- jackcosgrove 3y ago> ‘Inflammable’ means flammable? What a country! -Dr Nick
- denton-scratch 3y agoI think "inflammable" is a fake word.
- wongarsu 3y agoThat one's fun, because they don't really mean the same. It's just that there usually is no functional difference between the meanings. "to inflame" is to set something on fire. "to flame" is to be on fire. So something that's inflammable can be set on fire, something that's flammable can burn.
- Y_Y 3y agoI would have said the same thing as you, but it now occurs to me that something that is already on fire must be flammable but it is hardly inflammable since you couldn't set it on fire again (without first putting it out at least).
- jtbayly 3y agoI think I've always assumed it meant "unimpressed." That is not the "new" meaning under discussion, but they seem to hint at it when they say, "This new sense appears to stem from a mistaken belief that the first three letters of nonplus are there to indicate that someone is something other than “plussed” (although what being plussed would entail here remains a mystery)." I bet my meaning is the next change to this silly word. :)
- esperent 3y agoI have never known it to mean anything except for "perplexed", as a hiberno-English speaker. But now that I do know the newer meaning I'm both mildly nonplussed and totally nonplussed about it.
- Y_Y 3y agoMoi non plus
- vidarh 3y agoAnd this reaction, I think, hint at why this shift has happened: It will often be unclear if someone is unfamiliar with the word, whether it means perplexed or unruffled, because often the same situation would justify either. You might be perplexed at the reason someone cares about a situation because you yourself is totally unruffled - being both nonplussed and nonplussed about it... At least a couple of the examples they give are ones where either meaning is plausible. And so if someone is unfamiliar with the word, it'd be easy for them to infer the wrong thing and as a result associate the wrong meaning for the word going forward.
- djur 3y ago"I looked at Jim and he seemed nonplussed by the situation." Is Jim acting cool and relaxed according to his character, or is he uncharacteristically flustered? The author knows, the reader might not.
- Macha 3y agoCounter-anecdote: Also a hiberno-english speaker, I've always assumed unbothered to be the primary meaning. I was vaguely aware of the autoantonymic usage but definitely felt less common.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- digitalsushi 3y agoI never challenged myself to know the origin of this word but I have perhaps unjustifiably assumed this word was a type of doublespeak like the one used in 1984, a way to deliberately draw attention to a system monitoring for disapproval. With the recent automatic censoring of words like 'dead' on various social platforms being shifted to 'unalived' the same spirit of mockery persists.
- andycowley 3y agoAs a Brit, I don't think I've ever encountered the latter meaning. I've only ever heard it to mean 'perplexed'.
- n4r9 3y agoAlso a Brit, but I thought it meant "unbothered" until 5-6 years ago.
- rorylawless 3y agoAnother Brit confirming this understanding of the word (although I just found out about the original meaning about a minute ago).
- kibwen 3y agoAs an American, I assume without evidence that it's way more common in British English, because over here it feels like an exotic word that people only pull out to be semi-fancy, like "whom".
- zarzavat 3y agoWait… do Americans not say whom?
- GrantMoyer 3y agoThe Americans who know when to use whom and who and Americans who think they know when to use whom and who are those who use whom, while Americans whom the distiction between who and whom thouroughly confuses and Americans to whom whom is entirely unknown are those by whom who is solely used.
- topaz0 3y agoOh it's a bit more complicated than that. There are also those who don't use whom because they know it's a relic of a case system that has been gradually fading for a thousand years. Not to mention those whom use it incorrectly on purpose to annoy the pedants.
- SoftTalker 3y agoI've pretty much given up on trying to fight the evolution in the meaning of words. Singular "they" was one I resisted for a long time, but it's a lost cause. It still trips me up to hear it or especially to read it: what? did another person suddenly enter this context? I still avoid it myself, and think its use reduces clarity, but it is what it is. Word usage changes, evolves. A word or a different meaning of a word often starts as slang, then expands to become common usage. It's usually (but not always) apparent from context what the writer means. And, following the guidance of Strunk and White, don't use a fancy, uncommon, or potentially confusing word when plain words will do the job. Writing "he was at a loss" or "she didn't know what to do" is a few more words but much clearer to more readers than "he was nonplussed."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- causality0 3y agoSingular "they" was one I resisted for a long time, but it's a lost cause. I've had almost the opposite experience from you. I'd long embraced it as the correct word to use when referring to a person of unknown gender or to a hypothetical individual, but having to use it regarding real people caused me problems. When my wife became coworkers with a non-binary person and its usage came up every few days, the better I got at gendering them properly the worse I got at everyone else. First I started accidentally calling her other friends "they", and then I started sometimes referring to any woman as "they". Fortunately that coworker took a job elsewhere before I started referring to men as they too.
- causality0 3y agoI hate this word. When I'm reading a novel it's often hard to tell which meaning the author intends, and whether a character is confused by something or unbothered by something can be important.
- djur 3y agoThe word is skunked at this point. Using it guarantees that readers are going to have to pause and refer to the context, and depending on the context it may not even be possible to confidently disambiguate. Luckily both meanings have ample synonyms.
- Angostura 3y ago… I’m entirely nonplussed by your use of ‘skunked’.
- notnaut 3y agoWhat’s awesome about words is we can just say whatever bullshit we want and if anyone understands and repeats it, bam, new words! They don’t start off in the dictionary!
- stavros 3y agoI love "anon" for that reason. "I will be there anon!" If anyone complains about me being there either too early or too late, or neither, I point them to the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anon https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anon It can either mean "now", "soon", or "later".
- seabass-labrax 3y agoOh, how interesting - I had a personal 'eggcorn' interpretation that it was an elision of "and on" (which also makes sense in many contexts), and never connected it to the word "anon" in writing!
- lupire 3y agoWorks the same if you don't say "anon" at all.
- djur 3y agoIt's the term Bryan Garner uses for words that are inconsistent in meaning in a way that makes them difficult to use effectively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term I'm not sure what his origin was for the term, but "skunked" as an adjective to me indicates a beer that was spoiled by exposure to light and/or heat. It's gone off.
- dsign 3y agoI learned something here. But reading the archaic English examples, I wonder if previous writers (the first ones to bring the 'nonplussed' term to English) had a proper plague of editors and language sticklers pouring through their writing. Because if they had, they could have "canceled" those writers out of print for borrowing yet another Latin wording.
- slibhb 3y agoFirst they came for literally and I did nothing because I wasn't a pedant. Then they came for nonplussed and I still did nothing because I'm still not a pedant. I sure hope they don't come for pedant next.
- beretguy 3y agoNot to be a pedant, but I see you are completely nonplussed about all this.
- ethbr1 3y agoI'm not a literal pendant, but you have to admit it's a nonplus.
- huygens6363 3y agoYou are literally nonplussed.
- seventytwo 3y agoA+
- kalupa 3y agoA-plussed?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ithkuil 3y agoMinused
- evanb 3y agonegative-semidefinited
- 3y ago
- denton-scratch 3y agoMerriam-Webster brags in TFA about their descriptivist reputation; and indeed, they are thw arch-descriptivists. But I'm not aware of any contemporary publisher of dictionaries that doesn't take a descriptivist stance. This places pendants like me at a serious disadvantage; I can't rely on a dictionary to help me win arguments about correct usage. "Nonplussed" is like "disgruntled"; you can't be plussed, and you can't be gruntled.
- airstrike 3y ago> "Nonplussed" is like "disgruntled"; you can't be plussed, and you can't be gruntled. Color me doubleplussed
- defrost 3y agoC double plussed is a whole other language, the American Engrish of Ye Olde English.
- Strang 3y agoAmerican Heritage is much better. They respond to usage, but much more conservatively. And their entries will actually have brief explanations from their "usage panel" about ambiguous or changing meanings. https://dictionary.com https://dictionary.com
- Strang 3y agoUh that was supposed to be https://ahdictionary.com https://ahdictionary.com
- ycombinete 3y agoCollins dictionary is my go to. I avoid Miriam Webster. Unfortunately MW appears to have won the SEO wars.
- Y_Y 3y ago> It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate. > I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way. > I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it, since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do. etc. - Jack Winter
- airstrike 3y ago> was taken from the Latin non plus, which means “no more.” "No more" can have many slightly different meanings... I think this specifically means "no further/not more" rather than "no longer"
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoAnytime this word is used it sounds so much newspeak to me I forget it's a real one.
- falcor84 3y agoDespite being well-written, TFA left me nonplussed
- metabagel 3y agoI was only aware of the new definition, not the original one. I think the new definition has taken strong root in the U.S.
- jihadjihad 3y agoAnother one is "upshot". It's sometimes not even worth using the word because people think it means "upside".
- poszlem 3y agoFunnily enough, as a non-native speaker, I always thought "nonplussed" was a kind of Orwellian newspeak (like "doubleplusgood").
- lgeorget 3y agoAs a French, and as to uphold our reputation as an arrogant bunch, I though it was adopted from the French language. "moi non plus" means "me neither" so "I'm nonplussed" = "I have no idea either".
- kloch 3y ago> Mistake it may well be, but the fact remains that this sense of the word is in widespread use today, and may be found often enough in well regarded and highly edited, publications. I would say you are most likely to find this usage of that word in well regarded and highly edited, publications.
- adolph 3y agoI totally get nonplussed confused with notplussed: !i++;
- Izkata 3y ago> By the early 17th century nonplus was being used as a verb, with the meaning of “to cause to be at a loss as to what to say, think, or do.” Then, as now, the word is often encountered in its participial form (nonplussed), with a meaning that is nearly synonymous with “perplexed.” I never knew this meaning - as far as I remember I've always interpreted it as some form of "unconcerned" / "that's not relevant to me". I guess by outward appearance "at a loss for words" and "unconcerned" are kinda similar, even if the cause is different, which is why it's always fit well-enough in context.
- ilitirit 3y agoOn a tangential note, one of my pet peeves is the way that many people (mostly Americans?) pronounce words like "processes" as "process-eez". Words with Greek roots that end in -is or -es generally use the -eez suffix. e.g. analysis -> analyses; thesis -> theses In the case of Latin, it's -ix or -ex. e.g. index - indices, appendix - appendices. There are of course exceptions and outliers (suffix -> suffixes; octopus -> octopodes!?), but words like "process" and "bias" do not fall into the categories mentioned, so there's no reason to use the non-standard "processeez" and "biaseez". Unless - IMO - you want to sound like a snob... Think about it - how does one pronounce words like "successes" or "princesses"? One could argue that language evolves - this is true, but in general language evolves to have simpler rules with fewer exceptions rather than the other way around. Stop, let's all try to stop the madnesseez.
- mbork_pl 3y agoSort of related: I once heard someone pronounce "testicles" like a name of a Greek hero (think Heracles), just for the lulz. I found it hilarious...
- giraffe_lady 3y agoRhyming chipotle with aristotle is another good joke in this vein. You can mangle either one it's hilarious both ways.
- buescher 3y agoChipotélēs!
- emmelaich 3y agoThis may be an attempt to distinguish it phonetically from processORs.
- masfuerte 3y agoMaybe they were actually saying processees (whom processors act upon).
- frereubu 3y agoFor those who want to go down a small Wikipedia rabbit hole about dictionaries, I found this an interesting article on pre-Johnson dictionaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_English_dictionaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_English_dictionaries
- jason2323 3y agoNobody come for nonchalant!
- nh23423fefe 3y agoI thought this word meant "bothered" in the 1984 sense of plus=good i dont think ive ever seen the definition prior
- jayd16 3y agoYes, I also took it as wordplay on Doublespeak that found its way into casual slang.
- bubble12345 3y agoPeople use it as a synonym for 'unaffected'. Sometimes it is unclear what is intended, so personally I never write or say 'nonplussed'. To be honest, at this point I think it's a useless word!
- pvillano 3y agoLooks like the word carries its original meaning non plus
- duxup 3y agoGuess I have to add this to my list of "popular words that I have no idea what a given person means by them". It is interesting how they evolve and come and go.
- nonplus 3y agoI'm doing alright, thanks for asking.
- talkingtab 3y agoWords and meaning. This talks about how words come to mean something else. Nonplussed was "not knowing what to do". Now it is becoming "unruffled". But it raises a question. Do words evolve by mistake, or do they evolve because we need to say something and we don't have the right word for it? Unruffled, unaffected, unimpressed - for me all have a sense of ignoring a situation. Nixon was unaffected by student protests. As opposed to "not knowing what to do" And part of the problem is shades of meaning. Was someone steady in an unexpected situation? Or were they in a quandary and steady. Or were they just steady from stupidity? And isn't it interesting how words abound for how people react to situations? And do deduce the same meaning as other people? Like the thing about Eskimos have 200 words for snow? I was unaffected by the gift of an ice cream cone. I was unimpressed by the .. I was unruffled ... I was nonplussed ... Perhaps to fully consider and understand nonplussed we must know what plussed means. I was affected ... I was impressed ... I was ruffled ... I was plussed?
- ajmurmann 3y agoI think there are at least two forces that lead to words changing meaning: 1. We are looking to express a emotion but want to empathize it more. Existing words get "used up" because we tend to inflate the strength. This is how we get words like "sick!", "awesome" (which changed meaning quite a while ago). Either new words get created or existing ones get taken over. 2. Some people literally don't understand the original meaning and their usage takes over. Supposedly this has happened with "literally". My guess is that "nonplussed" is experiencing a little of both. Also "unruffled" IMO sounds terrible to modern ears (saying that as a ESL person though). Sounds like someone got out of bed and their hair is still excellent. Edit: after talking about this with my author wife, I think "unruffled" and "nonplussed" also mean sightly different things to me. "Unruffled" acknowledges that there might be reason to care. "Nonplussed" to me is a lot more dismissive. Which kinda makes it fit my reason 1 for me.
- tsimionescu 3y ago> Some people literally don't understand the original meaning and their usage takes over. Supposedly this has happened with "literally". What happened with literally is not that people didn't understand it's meaning and started using it with some other meaning. What happened with it is what happened with "very" a much longer time ago: it started being used as a generic augmentative adverb and started losing its specific meaning. When I say "this coffee is so bitter I'll literally die", I'm using literally as an augmentative, as an exaggeration. Similarly, originally when you used "very bitter" it would mean "truly bitter", but overtime it started becoming just a formulaic way of strengthening the meaning of bitter.
- datavirtue 3y agoSave yourself and your readers by not using this "word."
- rurp 3y agoHearing the word nonplussed always reminds me of this scene in Archer, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kCwpregWfKc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kCwpregWfKc
- caymanjim 3y agoThat's the only time I can recall ever encountering the word in the wild. I've probably seen it in passing, in a newspaper column or a novel, but Archer is the only reference I distinctly remember. It's not a widely-known or widely-used word.
- bigDinosaur 3y agoI never hear it in conversation or presentations or anything like that, but have encountered it reasonably often in novels.
- Sateeshm 3y agoI just saw that episode few mins ago lol.
- booleandilemma 3y agoWhen speaking, much like when writing code, I try to keep things simple. This means using small, common words so that I can be sure that people understand me when I talk. Most of my coworkers aren't fluent in English anyway, so it helps to not confuse them.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago"recent usage"? When was this article written? Dates on your articles bloggers!
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago(2017)
- JW_00000 3y agoThere are dated examples in the article.
- rjmill 3y agoI knew it! Context clues typically imply the ("wrong") meaning, so I misinterpreted this word for a while until I used it out loud, and my pedantic family corrected me. But so many usages of the word are vague, and the difference between "perplexed" and "ambivalent" is not super important in most stories. (Whoever is nonplussed is not likely to take action on the situation.) I had a feeling that some authors were using it "wrong." The article does a good job of finding examples where the author's intent was clear. But it's nigh impossible to figure out the intent in most cases. It's fascinating how so many different interpretations can thrive, while not being important enough to correct in most cases. In my head, "nonplussed" is equivalent to a blank stare. The described person is either not paying attention, or the situation went completely over their head.
- tremon 3y agoFunny. In my head, nonplussed was near-synonymous with unimpressed. So in my interpretation they were neither not paying attention, nor in over their head -- but the blank stare remains nonetheless. That still closer to your interpretation than "baffled, perplexed" as it apparently originally meant.
- gms7777 3y agoI always read it as meaning something like "unfazed" before seeing someone get corrected on it.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y agoI also, from reading a lot of literature, took this meaning. I’ve never been a fan of the word though, probably partially because of the ambiguity being discussed here
- camdenreslink 3y agoAnother word that is often used incorrectly. "Ambivalent" doesn't mean "unruffled" or "unbothered". It actually means to have two (possibly strong) contradictory emotions. It's more like "bittersweet" or to be "of two minds".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ajmurmann 3y agoI'd love to see a demographic and geographic analysis of usage of the two meanings.
- codeulike 3y agoA few years ago I named my number puzzle app "Numplussed" which I thought was a good name because the UK meaning of Nonplussed is "puzzled". And obviously you've got the word 'plussed' in there which is good for a maths game, and I changed the first bit from Non to Num. But then of course it turns out to a lot of the USA it means "not fussed" which is a terrible name to give to an app.
- crznp 3y agoIt is strange that they would claim that "non" is not a prefix but a Latin word with the same meaning as the prefix that is stuck on the front of the word. It can still be a seperate word, but Latin "persona non grata" has the same basic meaning in English. The Latin "non plus" doesn't mean perplexed or unconcerned (e: or unimpressed), so it would be even more confusing to write it that way.
- ilitirit 3y agoI've always thought that people misunderstood nonplussed because they interpret it as "not fussed".
- Apocryphon 3y agoThis corruption of nonplussed is so annoying to me that I’d just as rather abandon its usage and consign it to an archaic listing in the dictionary. Especially because this response can be both described as nonplussed according to its original definition, and not by its emergent!
- anon946 3y agoBemused (https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/can-bemuse-mean-amuse https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/can-bemuse-mean-amus...) is another word that is often understood "incorrectly".
- parpfish 3y agoI learned that “peruse” meant the exact opposite of what I thought when I got my GRE vocab study guide
- unzadunza 3y agoTravesty is another one, thanks to sports announcers.
- n4r9 3y agoA list of ones I've seen in this thread or know of already: * Nonplussed (miffed) * Ambivalent (conflicted) * Factoid (incorrect statement) * Bemused (confused) * Peruse (read thoroughly) * Travesty (distortion) * Transpire (to be revealed) * Literally (in actual fact) There's also "beg the question" which is often used to mean "naturally give rise to the question" but I believe originally meant "assumes the answer which it is trying to prove".
- bigstrat2003 3y agoDon't forget "could care less", which is profoundly stupid as the literal meaning of the words tells one that they are using the phrase wrong.
- technothrasher 3y agoThe modern colloquial usage of "begs the question" bugs the heck out of me. I try not to get too pedantic about language usage, but that one just sticks in my craw. I think because it's actually quite useful to understand when one is begging the question, and it feels a disservice to water down the phrase.
- n4r9 3y ago
- cbolton 3y agoThe article is super confusing. The anecdote about the drifting meaning of "nonplussed" is interesting, but the way it's framed as an example of mistake related to prefixes just doesn't make sense. I mean they don't give any evidence of a connection between the "wrong" usage of nonplussed and the "wrong" understanding of "non"?
- ignormies 3y ago> This new sense appears to stem from a mistaken belief that the first three letters of nonplus are there to indicate that someone is something other than “plussed” (although what being plussed would entail here remains a mystery) This is what's called a "lost positive". Rob Words on YouTube has a pretty good video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7TfjCIbtng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7TfjCIbtng
- robertlagrant 3y agoI could less. So much less!
- fumeux_fume 3y agoI wonder if the more recent misuses (i.e., meaning unimpressed) stem from the extensive use of "+" in marketing. Apple uses "+" and "pro" a lot. Collins dictionary has "nonpro" as word, but not "nonproed" yet. Ripe for disruption.
- mkaic 3y agoFascinating. I am only familiar with this definition of the word! To me, "nonplussed" has always meant "unimpressed, indifferent", adjacent (but not quite identical) in meaning to "nonchalant". I love watching language evolve before my very eyes, it's literally the coolest thing ever!
- Uehreka 3y agoI just never use the word, and tell others not to use it as well. There are synonyms for whatever you’re trying to say, just use those.
- tejohnso 3y agoIn my mind it came from the French non plus, meaning neither. Often heard when responding "me neither", as the "me" would be a very short syllable at the beginning of the response. I can imagine people hearing "non plus" and seeing uninterested or unfazed people uttering it, sharing lack of enthusiasm with someone else.
- arrowsmith 3y agoAccording to this source it comes directly from Latin: https://www.etymonline.com/word/nonplus https://www.etymonline.com/word/nonplus
- bzhang255 3y agoWell, also according to the article itself :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pavlov 3y agoFaced with this kind of irritating confusion, one must try to stay nonchalant rather than nonplussed.
- pessimizer 3y agoIt's the shittiest way that language changes: when the majority of people using a word are pretending that they know what it means in order to impress other people, rather than using a simpler word that they know. They seem to be confusing it with a Newspeak word, which is even more dark. I'm upset that we're losing "disinterested" to people looking for a snooty way to say that they're not impressed.
- kazinator 3y agoIt's clear that the word references the straightforward non plus meaning "no more". You've come to a dead end; you don't know what to think or do. It might actually be from non plus ultra: nothing more beyond. When you've reached the non plus ultra point in your journey, your ass has been nonplussed.
- ezekiel68 3y agoI am plussed that this author spent so many words "debunking" the notion of prefix in the English variants, when his etymology revealed that said prefix did exist and was significant.
- LASR 3y agoAlso, "peruse". Half the time I have no idea if they looked through it carefully or they just skimmed through it. Also "the proof is in the pudding" this is opposite to what the original meaning was - which is that the proof is not in the pudding. It's in the eating. Can't really even tell what people even mean these days.
- cryptonector 3y agoIs it a stretch though? If one is impressed by something, then one might have something to say about it too, so having nothing to say (being nonplussed) because of being unimpressed... That is, if being unimpressed generally leads to one being nonplussed, then maybe being unimpressed can be expressed as being nonplussed.
- Gimpei 3y agoI don’t normally care about meaning shifts as it’s part of language evolving. But nonplussed really does bother me, as the new meaning is the opposite of the original meaning. So I often have no idea what people mean when they use the word. Is it so hard to use a dictionary? All you have to do is click on the word.
- barryrandall 3y agoIt's apparently so hard to use a dictionary that people accidentally created a new meaning for a word.
- paulddraper 3y ago> the new meaning is the opposite of the original meaning From a certain point of view. Or: The original meaning is a negative reaction. The new meaning is a neutral reaction.
- selimthegrim 3y agoI feel less bad about “misusing” this word now (I had thought it meant indifferent instead of confused)
- lachaux 3y agoAs a non native English speaker, nonplus is among the words and phases I try my best not to use. The others include biweekly, next Tuesday, twelve o'clock, etc.
- dfawcus 3y agoThat is why we have fortnight, hence fortnightly, so biweekly can mean twice weekly. However that then all falls apart once we have US based folks in the conversation, especially if one of them used 'biweekly'!
- Modified3019 3y agoApparently, “several” does not in fact originally come from “around seven”, but came from “sever” (as in to fork/split/break), so it originally meant “2 or more”. But because of how it sounds, the meaning basically morphed into “seven-ish”.
- Valodim 3y agoHuh. Can't say I have ever thought or heard of several as "sevenish".
- sandspar 3y agoRunning a dictionary seems like it takes a great deal of humility. You have to continually cede ground to people who know less than you.
- rendaw 3y agoI think the descriptivist vs prescriptivist debate often misses the point. Language shifts aren't bad in themselves but some language shifts reduce useful specificity in a language. Like if "literally" no longer means "literally", how do you precisely communicate "literally"? Language shifts can also impart the ability to communicate new things. Rather than an article that says "this now means X" or "this should mean Y so using it to mean X is wrong" I'd like an article that analyzes the functional gains and losses of these changes and whether they suggest resisting the change or not on that basis. It sounds like "perplexed" is a fine and common replacement for "nonplussed", although similarly it doesn't sound like nonplussed adds any meaning over "unimpressed". Is this the "Who is Taylor Swift dating now?" of grammarians?
- reportgunner 3y agoFrankly I'm nonplussed to hear about this word for the first time in my life.
- manchmalscott 3y agoI’ve only ever known nonplussed to mean indifferent and unbothered.