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I 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 a
by jtbayly 2y ago
I 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 2y 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 2y agoMoi non plus
- vidarh 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago[deleted]
- wongarsu 2y agoThat meaning is actually already in webster, together with "not surprised, not bothered" which is probably what the articled describes as unruffled [1]. Not sure why the article pretends like they haven't already added the "new" meaning to their dictionary. Maybe it happened after the article came out 1: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonplussed https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonplussed
- inanutshellus 2y agoThe "unimpressed" meaning is the primary meaning I've heard and I'm not young. They're hand-wringing over a phenomenon as old as I am, it seems.
- wongarsu 2y agoHowever the article explicitly says "we’d just like to give you fair warning in case our descriptivist nature causes us to take action" which implies that they hadn't actually taken added that meaning at the time of writing.
- aidenn0 2y agoIn case the word "plussed" came into the dictionary meaning "impressed"
- carabiner 2y ago"NOTE: The use of nonplussed to mean 'unimpressed' is an Americanism that has become increasingly common in recent decades and now appears frequently in published writing. It apparently arose from confusion over the meaning of nonplussed in ambiguous contexts, and it continues to be widely regarded as an error." Read: only dumb people use it this way.
- Davidzheng 2y agothat's not at all what they are trying to say....
- vbezhenar 2y agoI’m nonloled about this situation.
- elicash 2y agoI am excited to start slipping "plussed" casually into conversation.
- parpfish 2y agoYou should be thankful your coworkers don’t already say that the “plus one” an idea/comment
- datadrivenangel 2y agoI would be so nonplussed by this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Tijdreiziger 2y agohttps://youtube.com/shorts/Z9ifuTpljg0 https://youtube.com/shorts/Z9ifuTpljg0
- adamc 2y agoI admit to not understanding why people assume meanings rather than look them up.
- tremon 2y agoSo... you're nonplussed about why people would pick up new words from casual usage rather than from books?
- da_chicken 2y agoThe context in which a word is used is typically more informative than the meaning in the dictionary. For example, "set" has an unreasonably large number of definitions [0] but I can't remember the last time its usage in a sentence was confusing. It's also why "cromulent" from The Simpsons had a clear meaning during the episode that coined the word even though it did not exist prior to the episode airing. [0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/set https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/set
- cryptonector 2y agoThat's how we learn 95% of words' meanings: by osmosis from hearing them used by others whom we presume know their proper meanings. I doubt you've done 100,000 dictionary look-ups, or any number remotely in the ballpark of the number of English words you know.
- bazoom42 2y agoHow did you learn your first language? Most people learn to speak before they learn to read and use a dictionary.
- svat 2y ago> "unimpressed." That is not the "new" meaning under discussion That is pretty much (very close to) the new meaning under discussion: as the article says, the old meaning was “at a loss as to what to say, think, or do”, and the new meaning (started showing up in the early 20th century, though I only encountered it recently) is “unruffled, unconcerned”, which is close to your “unimpressed” (and close to the opposite of the earlier/standard meaning). (The upshot is that the word “nonplussed” is basically skunked now, and should not be used because readers will misunderstand/be unsure. Some discussion in this thread https://mathstodon.xyz/@dpiponi/111684566418809307 https://mathstodon.xyz/@dpiponi/111684566418809307 including examples of “enervated” and “livid”, and the observation that the etymology of “non plus” is similar to “I can't even”.)