What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)

First 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.

You are literally nonplussed.

Minused

negative-semidefinited

A+

A-plussed?

That begs the question, what will you do about it?

I’m fairly nonplussed at what has happened to “begging the question” - its usage now is an inversion of its original philosophical meaning as a form of fallacy. It’s common usage is a way of saying “the question arises”.

I take objection to the characterization of "begging the question" having a changed/incorrect meaning. I assert that the "original philosophical meaning" is the fad idiom, and the common usage is a true parsing of the words unrelated to the idiom.

"This begs the question of why X Y Z" is just a shortening of "this [thing you said] begs [that] the question [be asked] of why X Y Z".

I think the only reason there's any discussion about it at all is because the sorts of people who are likely to use the idiom of "begging the question" with regard to logic, are the sort of people who enjoy being pedantic about other people's language, and this presents an opportunity to do so.

You could say I'm plussed about the whole thing. It brings up a whelming amount of emotion in me.

You see a lot of this kind of thing: "spiders aren't bugs", "whales aren't fish", "strawberries aren't berries"—no, words mean things, unfortunately, even if that's a little inconvenient for taxonomers!

> "spiders aren't bugs"

This one is particularly egregious, because they literally are.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bug

They may not be insects, but non-insect arthropods are included in the definition of "bug".

You might be correct, but it begs the question: where are your citations for that?

You would like a citation that people with an interest in rhetoric and logic tend to be pedantic and more likely to correct others if they see an opportunity to do so? I cite the comment section of https://news.ycombinator.com/news

I sanction this comment.

> original philosophical meaning

It was a stupid translation, so I don't mind people retaking the words for their actual meaning.

Begging the question, he will continue to do nothing.

I bet he could care less.

You beat me to it.

Irregardless of begging, they should of been less of a lose cannon with they’re word’s

For all intensive purposes.

This is a moot point that should be tabled.

We'll circle back to that later for readdress.

The issue is unpresidented.

The MCM architecture of the chip can be recognized by the multiple dice beneath the heat spreader.

Please - I can't breath!

Yes, we were not pre-prepared for it.

I've begun borrowing "it's a moo point" from Friends, in some conversations. "It's like a cow's opinion, you know: It doesn't matter. It's moo!"

What a way to wreck havoc.

I feel like I've been hit by a lose cannon all my life.

As per prior behavior, the poster’s actions against this will be comprised of nothing.

Hopefully, some of the people in this thread understood what you were doing there.

Some men just want to watch the dictionary burn

Not burn, expand. New usages for words make the dictionary bigger.

That's something only a villain would say.

Explaining the joke:

"Begging the question" is an expression that properly means "assuming the conclusion," i.e. circular reasoning.

However, the comment above deliberately uses the incorrect meaning "raising the question."

Good explanation except for the words "proper" and "incorrect".

The irony is that we can't be sure of that, since "proper" and "incorrect" may mean something else.

Could of, would of, should of.

No, they came for sentence-final prepositions, up for which nobody was left to stand.

Please, non plus.

(original Latin meaning ;)

Not to be a pedant, but I see you are completely nonplussed about all this.

I'm not a literal pendant, but you have to admit it's a nonplus.

I always thought Google+ should've ditched the "dislike" button for a "nonplussed" button.

The misunderstandings in this thread make for an inflammable situation.

The word you really need to worry about is “nonpedant.”

I 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.

Funny. 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.

I always read it as meaning something like "unfazed" before seeing someone get corrected on it.

I 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

Another 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".

But it can mean "unmoved"!

In a metaphorical physical sense where an object is immobilized by two opposing forces.

But it's direct. It's "both valences" ("valence is loosely like " value"), like in chemistry. "Ambi", which implies that there are only two possibilities, instead of "bi" which merely means 2 actual among many possible.

Words 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?

I 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.

> 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.

I think that's how it started ("figuratively literally"), but not sure that modern youth know the literal meaning of literal.

As you say, its meaning extremely vulnerable to the fate it experienced, and many words have suffered the same fate: very, really, actually, ...

People who mock "misuse" of "literally" should take a good look that their own diction.

I promise you that the kids do know what literal means. They deserve more credit.

Here's how Horace puts it:

As leaves in the woods are changed with the fleeting years; the earliest fall off first: in this manner words perish with old age, and those lately invented flourish and thrive, like men in the time of youth. We, and our works, are doomed to death: whether Neptune, admitted into the continent, defends our fleet from the north winds, a kingly work; or the lake, for a long time unfertile and fit for oars, now maintains its neighboring cities and feels the heavy plow; or the river, taught to run in a more convenient channel, has changed its course which was so destructive to the fruits. Mortal works must perish: much less can the honor and elegance of language be long-lived. Many words shall revive, which now have fallen off; and many which are now in esteem shall fall off, if it be the will of custom, in whose power is the decision and right and standard of language.

> Supposedly this has happened with "literally".

Allegedly also with "factoid", which means "something which resembles a fact" versus the misuse of "a small fact".

It's frustrating because it's like watching people declare that aster-oids are actual stars, except smaller. Or that human-oids and andr-oids are small people.

This can be traced to CNN Headline News in 1991, which put "factoid" in common culture.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n13g2Ae1GiU

There it was used to mean silly facts. I'm not sure "small fact" is the common use. I'd say "I had cereal for breakfast" is a "small" fact, but not a "factoid" in that sense.

Finally! Finally I’ve found a fellow factoid correct / original meaning aficionado!

I ceased to die on the hill but it still makes me twitch.

I like to soften the blow by noting at least we can all agree that saying "a factoid is a small fact" is a factoid.

"Unruffled" is an odd word. I know what it means but I wouldn't use it as the definition for another word. "Unfazed" feels like a stronger word meaning the same thing.

I think people just didn't know what "nonplussed" meant and analyzed a new meaning for it based on the belief that "non-" was a prefix.

It's a bit like how people analyze "disgruntled" and use humorously the non-word "gruntled" to mean "to be content".

I think what's happening today is almost all #2, but I'd argue it's not really that language is evolving, but just that people are continuously making mistakes, and somehow correcting them has become this weird taboo. You're a pedant or "grammar Nazi" for pointing out incorrect usage and grammar, so nobody learns and people keep making the same mistakes again and again.

Language evolves, but it evolves very slowly. Middle English didn't just turn into Modern English in a year, it happened over hundreds of years. What we're seeing today is probably noise due to a (hopefully temporary) illiteracy and education problem. If the language is really evolving such that "literally" turns into its opposite, we won't know this for decades.

The situation of correcting someone else's English is socially awkward, not least because the person doing the correcting usually gets it slightly wrong themselves. It's much better, in my opinion, if corrections are something that's done in private by editors (and if it's oral and thus can't be edited, I'm... nonplussed by the possibility of mistakes). However, even somewhat reputable publications in the Anglosphere rarely have that kind of rigour in their editing, so I think we're doomed to an accelerated level of change in the English language. At least that gives us linguistics enthusiasts more to talk about :)

From the article - "nonplus" evolved from a noun to a verb within the frame of the late 16th century to the early 17th century. A fairly short stretch of years.

Also I think we probably have far more literacy over the time frame of this nonplussed change than at pretty much any other time in history. So it seems strange to me to blame these shifts on illiteracy.

The period that "nonplussed" started developing this contrary meaning was the most literate and educated period in human history.

> 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?

Mostly the former, from what I can tell. People hear a “fancy” word, misunderstand it based on limited context, begin to use it where a less-fancy word would do (for whatever reason), and before long one cannot use the word in the original sense without being misunderstood by most audiences.

This typically results in reduced space for expression, as a distinct word with its own shades of meaning is turned into just “fancy [other word or phrase]”.

This is what militant descriptivists (and some prescriptivists) miss.

"Correct" and "incorrect" language is not the importsmant distinction.

What's important is whether a novelty of language increases or decreases expressive power. New words are better than corrupting old words, unles the old meaning is so low importance that it doesn't deserve to keep its place in the "Huffman" encoding of the language (which is, high frequency words/structures should be smaller).

Except nonplussed isn't a fancy word with pedigree, it's something that you would assume originated in 1984 as one of the words in the simplified language for proles.

It looks and sounds vaguely French-derived (even if it isn’t) but doesn’t end in -ment. That puts it in the “fancy” category for a lot of folks.

Why do you say that?

Not the GP, but imagine it has to do with "Newspeak" using the prefixes "plus" and "doubleplus" for emphasis. Nonplussed may have had a similar ring to "plusungood".

Actually, the proles in 1984 used normal English (as we read in the scene where Winston goes drinking in the proletarian sector and chats with the old man about life before Ingsoc). Newspeak was for the Party members.

It’s almost certain that the meaning of some words does evolve by mistake, and “nonplussed” may be an example of that. We learn the meaning of many words purely from context, and for some words, the typical contexts they appear in lend themselves to misinterpretation, in combination with what their linguistic form inherently suggests (like the “non-“ in “nonplussed”). When sufficiently repeated with the mistaken meaning, that new meaning is likely to become established.

> I was unaffected by the gift of an ice cream cone. I was unimpressed by the .. I was unruffled ... I was nonplussed ...

Exactly, if being unimpressed leads to you having nothing to say, then being unimpressed leads you to being nonplussed. If you're nonplussed then that might be due to being unimpressed. Thus being nonplussed can become a way of saying that one is unimpressed -- "nonplused" is a more impressive SAT word than "unimpressed" (which isn't an SAT word), so it's rather useful as a way to express just how unimpressed one really is: so unimpressed as to bring out a ten dollar word for expressing the level of unimpressedness.

> 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?

Both, I believe. See also linguistic descriptivism versus prescriptivism. And the words cromulent and embiggen.

I have a pet theory that words in a language obey to both an etymological logic and a "poetic" logic. Sometimes the two don't coincide and the accepted meaning of the word drift toward the poetic imagery.

The 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.

I think it should join "billion" in never being ever used again due to its ambiguity.

How is "billion" ambiguous?

Does it mean something other than 1,000,000,000?

EDIT: Apparently in some cultures, it means a million million, ie, 1,000,000,000,000, or what most people would call "trillion".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

For the last several decades, every English speaking country has used the short billion (1e9).

Yep, even the BBC surrendered to the Americanism.

According to Wikipedia's summary of the situation, the French are to blame for the ambiguity - no surprises there! ;) But if we're going to avoid Americanisms, the better way is simply to use the word 'milliard', which makes perfect, unambiguous sense in any language.

Except that it's a terrible word because milli means thousand, and ard just means a grammatical modification.

So all that accomplishes is conflating thousand with million with billion. (Of course "million" is already a conflation of "thousand"!)

Oh, good point... Right, back to the drawing board - how about "kilocount" for a thousand, "megacount" for a million, and "gigacounts" for a (short) billion? The prefixes were apparently resurrected from the Greek for use in the metric system, but haven't had any other contradictory meanings as far as I can tell. I know I'm mixing up the Greek and Latin roots with "-count", but "kiloarithmos" is two syllables too many!

It just doesn't have the same ring to call someone a "milliardare"

It's impressive how many "journalists" get this wrong when copying news written in English.

… I’m entirely nonplussed by your use of ‘skunked’.

It'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

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.

What’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!

I 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

It can either mean "now", "soon", or "later".

Oh, 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!

Works the same if you don't say "anon" at all.

It's a perfectly cromulent word.

As a Brit, I don't think I've ever encountered the latter meaning. I've only ever heard it to mean 'perplexed'.

Its clearly a UK/USA split, for some reason the article does not mention this.

Wikipedia has it on 'List of words having different meanings in American and British English'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_having_different...

The article does not mention this, but the second paragraph links a MW definition which does explicitly call out that this usage is primarily US-based: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonplussed

Also a Brit, but I thought it meant "unbothered" until 5-6 years ago.

Another Brit confirming this understanding of the word (although I just found out about the original meaning about a minute ago).

As a non native English speaker, it’s my first time seeing or hearing this word.

Don't worry I'm sure there are a good number of native English speakers who've never come across it either. It's not exactly in common usage.

If it were in common usage, there couldn't be confusion over its meaning. The whole situation can only arise for words that most people don't know.

Which means it's of particularly limited use to a foreign speaker.

Yeah, if I was a non-native English speaker, I'd be nonplussed about the word (both meanings).

But some commonly used words are confusing. Sanction means both to allow and to disallow. Literally is a nightmare, especially in written form, but also spoken without enough cultural context.

I don't like all these examples, but here's a list of 40 mostly common words or two word phrases that mean their opposite. [1] There's probably 10-20 of those that a new to English speaker is likely to run into. But then, I never got far enough into other languages, maybe this is a common phenomenon.

[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their...

> But some commonly used words are confusing. Sanction means both to allow and to disallow.

Well, technically, it means to allow or to punish. But you're close enough. It does have these two senses, they are obviously in tension with each other, and both are common.

But, because both senses are common, this isn't a source of confusion. (And the later sense of punishment did not arise from confusion on the part of speakers, as is the case for nonplussed.)

As a non native its always fun to learn new vocab. A few months ago I heard the word Vicariously for like the second or third time, and when I looked at the definition it was interestingly both complex and very human at the same time:

experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another.

As 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".

like an exotic word that people only pull out to be semi-fancy, like "whom"

Semi-fancy? Man, that's a pretty low bar for fifty-cent words. I use it so I sound like I actually went to school and paid attention. If those with whom I speak find basic grammar fancy, that's on them.

What makes the latter sentence sound highfalutin is that you've been required to contort it away from idiomatic American English sentence structure in order to force in a "whom". The usual way of phrasing the sentence avoids "who" entirely: "If the people I speak with" or "If the people I'm talking to".

Who(m) are you talking about?

It's the "m", not the sentence structure. The awkward archaic structure is a different, often comorbid, affectation among Latinophiles.

Wait… do Americans not say whom?

The 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.

Oh 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.

Kudos for writing the entire sentence without making a mistake (yes, I checked). Although perhaps the use of 'whilst' would complete the intended stylistic flare?

Not much.

Americans use "whom" some, especially in formal writing and/or speech, but colloquially "who" is much more common.

For example, as an American a sentence like "Whom did you invite to the party?" sounds a bit stilted and formal to me.

> as an American a sentence like "Whom did you invite to the party?" sounds a bit stilted and formal to me

It would be fair to call this ungrammatical in American English.

But whom does survive in fronted prepositional phrases ("the person for whom this item was obtained..."). It's dead in prepositional phrases that haven't been fronted just like it's dead everywhere else.

Something vaguely similar happened in Spanish, where there is a special pronoun case that can only be used with the preposition con ("with"). There, the special case descends from, interestingly enough, the same preposition, Latin cum, instead of from the Latin case system. But the phenomenon ends up being the same.

"Whom in this room would you boom?" is not ungrammatical though.

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/11/theater/sunday-view-party...

It's certainly a surprising enough construct that it sounds incorrect, which is the metric that matters most to most people.

> "Whom in this room would you boom?" is not ungrammatical though.

Try polling some people on that.

We do, but "who" is acceptable in both tenses. There's no reason to ever use "whom" because it's the only one you can use wrong.

"To whom did you give the book?" is more often "Who'd you give the book to?" complete with the similarly forbidden preposition.

Yet, among those with whom I associate, "Who didja..." is more common than the semantically equivalent elision "Who'd you", probably because it is ambiguous whether the latter is in the past or present tense.

(For context, I live in south-west England, have an RP accent, and 'whom' was genuinely the word that felt most natural to me when writing this post.)

People speak of the future conditional so rarely, it doesn't affect linguistic evolution. "Whodja" being shorter and less stuttery than "whodidja" is a much more powerful driver. Like "Wensday", unless you actually need to disambiguate past from future.

> because over here it feels like an exotic word that people only pull out to be semi-fancy, like "whom".

Them's fightin' words. 'Whom' is super useful because it is grammatically necessary.

Give me a sentence where it necessarily eliminates ambiguity and I will thoughtlessly replace it with something more colloquial and similarly unambiguous. It's possible you'll find an example I can't trivially fix, but I think they're rare enough to be more or less irrelevant.

"Babe, we have guests, whom we use the fancy relative pronouns with."

Don't make me delve any deeper into pedantry ("with whom we use...")

JK Rowling uses it frequently in the Harry Potter series, a series aimed at children. I assume her editors carefully combed her words for anything that may confuse a child. Nonplussed got through. Perhaps because British editors thought nonplussed is easy to understand?

I always knew it as perplexed. I eschew this inferior recent meaning.

As another Brit, I too have only ever used it to mean perplexed.

But frequently I’ve seen it used in the context of perplexed about the fuss - which I guess has contributed to the newer meaning

what about 'moot'. Do Brits screw that up like Americans? 'moot point'

Hmmm, is the second definition here [1] the "screwed up" one?

> An issue regarded as potentially debatable, but no longer practically applicable. Although the idea may still be worth debating and exploring academically ... the idea has been rendered irrelevant for the present issue.

That's literally the only way I've heard it. (American here.) I'm nonplussed about this.

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/moot_point

"The second usage given is modern and is the meaning more commonly understood in American English, possibly because of the association with moot court."

"Up for debate but not decided yet"

"Debatable, but decision doesn't matter".

It's a natural ambiguity, resolved by context, one of many, many in language. Which one is correct is a mute point.

A rare thing to be able to hear people talk who actually know what words mean.

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. :)

I 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.

And 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.

"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.

Counter-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.

Moi non plus

That 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

"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.

What do you think "dumb" means?

("struck dumb" is a synonym for "nonplussed" !)

that's not at all what they are trying to say....

The "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.

However 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.

In case the word "plussed" came into the dictionary meaning "impressed"

> "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 including examples of “enervated” and “livid”, and the observation that the etymology of “non plus” is similar to “I can't even”.)

I am excited to start slipping "plussed" casually into conversation.

You should be thankful your coworkers don’t already say that the “plus one” an idea/comment

I would be so nonplussed by this.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Z9ifuTpljg0

I admit to not understanding why people assume meanings rather than look them up.

The 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

So... you're nonplussed about why people would pick up new words from casual usage rather than from books?

That'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.

How did you learn your first language? Most people learn to speak before they learn to read and use a dictionary.

I’m nonloled about this situation.

Merriam-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.

> 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

One of these is not like the others. Toward as the opposite of untoward appears in shakespeare

"kempt" as well. So I don't think the purpose is to only use words that don't actually exist, but where the negative is much more common.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kempt

Google Books Ngram Viewer for kempt vs unkempt: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=kempt%2C+unkem...

> This places pendants like me at a serious disadvantage; I can't rely on a dictionary to help me win arguments about correct usage.

I feel like you're being sent a strong signal about what "correct" means re usage but refusing to heed it.

Dictionaries aren't descriptivist because of an idealogical commitment or whatever; a strictly prescriptivist stance is simply not very useful for achieving the goals that a dictionary has.

> simply not very useful for achieving the goals that a dictionary has.

Apparently the dictionary's goals are not the same as my goals. Sure, I want to know about incorrect usages; but I also want to know that those usages are incorrect.

Simply put, that's not how English works.

Say that an English speaker speaks a sentence, and an English listener understands it. If they both agree that it was an English sentence -- including no jargon -- and they both agree on the meaning of the sentence, then that's correct English. If the two individuals have also never met before, then it's certainly correct English.

That's what "defined by usage" means. English does not have a language regulator or language academy.

> English does not have a language regulator

English does have lexicographers, though. I should be able to turn to a dictionary to find out what "literally" means, and it's regrettable that that inquiry will tell me the word has two directly-opposed meanings, without noting that one of them is wrong.

I think you are mistaking the map for the territory. I think you are blaming the data (actual usage) when the model is wrong (dictionaries).

"Literally" is allowed to have a valid and true definition of "figuratively" because exaggeration and hyperbole are used for rhetoric and expression. That's a vital and popular way language is used, and in the case of "literally" it is so commonly encountered that it worth noting in descriptive texts that it's common.

FWIW that's also how languages work that do have an academy. The academy may be a participant in the process but they don't control it, that's basically just a relic of before we understood how languages work.

> that's basically just a relic of before we understood how languages work

Relics that unfortunately maintain significant influence in at least France and Germany.

When I grew up and was just learning to write, orthography was "revamped" by literal committee, in some cases even going so far as deriving a new spelling via false etymologies.

It wasn't really a big deal for me practically, but it just seems bizarre.

I understood what you meant I was just trying to gently point out that it's not a goal that is valued or even taken seriously by people who study language, including lexicographers. Some curiosity about why that is could take you pretty far here.

I know why it is; I know that language changes, and I know that one task of lexicographers is to record those changes. But I don't think they should give the same status to a usage that is just a decade old, and restricted to casual chit-chat among teenagers, as one would accord to a usage that is established over centuries.

According to TFA, "nonplussed" is from Latin "non plus" (no more), and it doesn't seem to have ever had that meaning in English. So I don't really care about "nonplussed". I do care about "literally" (by the letter), and the fact that lexicographers treat its usage to mean "figuratively" as perfectly legitimate. At least, the dictionaries should point out that the version I consider wrong is slang.

The result is that the word "literally" can't now be used in precise discourse, and you have to find some awkward circumlocution. This kind of abuse makes the language less expressive, and is cause for regret.

Why can't the English learn to speak?

~ Prof. Henry Higgins

I had to check m-w's entry for "literally". While they do include a sense 2 that is similar to "figuratively", there is a substantial note afterwards and an FAQ that does a great job of explaining the status of the two senses and a touch of their history. They give some facts that contradict your above, as well (related to the timeline, as well as what constitutes slang). In case you're interested: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

I do think this is what the dictionary should say. It describes actual usage, including disagreements about it.

By the way, I do think there is a place for linguistic prescriptions, it's just in style guides rather than dictionaries. E.g., fine for the Economist to decide "literally" will only be used in its literal sense in their pages.

I don't want my granddaughters never learning the meaning of "figuratively" because it's fallen out of use, having been replaced by "literally".

If that happens, it won't be the dictionary's fault.

> you can't be gruntled.

Why? It's a perfectly cromulent word: https://comb.io/tVAKjq

American 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

Uh that was supposed to be https://ahdictionary.com

Collins dictionary is my go to. I avoid Miriam Webster. Unfortunately MW appears to have won the SEO wars.

> This places pendants like me at a serious disadvantage; I can’t rely on a dictionary to help me win arguments about correct usage.

First, unless you are dangling from a piece of jewelry, “pedants”, not “pendants”.

Second, stop worrying about “correct” usage and worry about clear and effective communication. It’s a lot less useful and convincing to argue that a usage is wrong by some arbitrary standard than to argue, e.g., that it promotes confusion where an alternative expression would be more clear to the target audience. Not only is it a more useful approach, it also lets you get benefit from dictionaries again.

> “pedants”, not “pendants”

I noticed my fat-finger mistake, but it was too late to edit.

> worry about clear and effective communication

Oh, I do. That's why I object to using "literally" to mean "figuratively", i.e. the exact opposite.

I mean, I don't object to ignorant people using words ignorantly; but lexicographers know better, and should be calling out ignorant usages.

Yeah, that’s literally the worst. I hope you also only use “terrific” in the original meaning (terrifying) instead of this silly modern usage… (joking, of course)

C double plussed is a whole other language, the American Engrish of Ye Olde English.

Not to be a pedant about the spelling of "pedant", but...

But... it's not customary around here to pull people up for typos. At least, I avoid it unless it's funny.

I usually don't correct other people's typos, but they are much more funny when they're made by pedants.

Fair!

> "Nonplussed" is like "disgruntled"; you can't be plussed, and you can't be gruntled.

Color me doubleplussed

> "Nonplussed" is like "disgruntled"; you can't be plussed, and you can't be gruntled.

And this is we end up with words like 'combobulate'.

> 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

It 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.

I 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.

> 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.

It's apparently so hard to use a dictionary that people accidentally created a new meaning for a word.

Hearing the word nonplussed always reminds me of this scene in Archer,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kCwpregWfKc

That'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.

I never hear it in conversation or presentations or anything like that, but have encountered it reasonably often in novels.

I just saw that episode few mins ago lol.

I was only aware of the new definition, not the original one. I think the new definition has taken strong root in the U.S.

This 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.

Merriam-Webster has its own entry about just that topic: words that are their own antonyms!

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/words-own-opposites

That was a fascinating article.

> Cleave is often cited as the go-to contronym: it can refer to splitting something apart and to uniting two things

Weird, I cannot remember ever seeing "cleave" used to mean "uniting two things".

"Inflammable" is my go-to example of a word that shouldn't exist in the English language. Causes too much confusion. I always use "flammable" and "nonflammable".

> Weird, I cannot remember ever seeing "cleave" used to mean "uniting two things".

Here's an example I stole from the internet [1] "People in the remote mountain villages still cleave to their old traditions."

I'll leave other examples of cleavage meaning two things coming together to your imagination.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cleave-t...

Yeah, never seen that usage of "cleave". I would have expected that sentence written with a different word: "People in the remote mountain villages still cling to their old traditions."

With regards to "cleavage", I always thought that it was based on the other meaning of the word, the one about splitting things apart: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cleavage

> "Inflammable" is my go-to example of a word that shouldn't exist in the English language.

What about "inflammation" (from the same root), like what happens when you bruise yourself, or injure a joint? Is that OK?

Or you should you get a "flammation" instead?

Edit: Or when interpersonal tensions are high, and a situation becomes inflamed?

Ha, you make some good points and I would be ok with those words. But just because the root word (inflame) and some of its derived words are useful, that doesn't mean that we need to allow all possible prefix and suffix derivations of that root word.

Wow. You really want some arbiter of which words are "allowed" or not? That sounds like some real Ministry of Truth type shit. It seems especially weird on a tech site, when tech jargon has historically been rich with wordplay and word construction.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/introduction.html

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html

That sense of 'cleave' is used in the Boney M song "Rivers of Babylon". The lyrics can be found in several song aggregation sites, such as the King James version of the Christian Bible: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Psalms#Psa...

> I cannot remember ever seeing "cleave" used to mean "uniting two things".

"Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." - Genesis 2:24

> ‘Inflammable’ means flammable? What a country!

-Dr Nick

That 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.

I 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).

You could also argue that some things, like most metal powders, are barely inflammable (very hard to light) but are very flammable (once they do burn they burn really well and are hard to put out)

The way it's used on warning labels, "inflammable" means it can combust without an obvious ignition. "Flammable" needs to be set on fire from an external source.

I think "inflammable" is a fake word.

> The person who introduced it gave the two definitions and then basically said "it's the only word I know that means its opposite"

That guy is a literal pain in my behind.

Egregious is like that, if I remember correctly

A 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.

Funnily enough, as a non-native speaker, I always thought "nonplussed" was a kind of Orwellian newspeak (like "doubleplusgood").

As 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".

On 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.

Sort 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...

Rhyming chipotle with aristotle is another good joke in this vein. You can mangle either one it's hilarious both ways.

Chipotélēs!

That's a really interesting observation.

Notably, it's only the noun plural that becomes "-eez" ("these processes"), while the verb present tense remains "-iz" ("she processes his application").

It seems to be going along with the gradual adoption of "often" with a "t" sound -- "off-tuhn" instead of "off-uhn".

Nobody said it with a "t" when and where I grew up (or on TV that I remember), because obviously the second syllable of "often" was the same as in "soften", "moisten", "hasten", "fasten", "glisten", and so forth. All silent t's.

But now it's at the point where probably a majority of people I hear on television and podcasts, as well as in my personal life, pronounce the "t". But only in "often" -- not in a single one of the other words I listed.

Both "often" and "processes" seem to fall in the category of hypercorrection, where people are trying to sound more correct.

I’ve noticed it too and it seems to be getting more common. I’m pretty sure it’s just hypercorrection.

This may be an attempt to distinguish it phonetically from processORs.

Maybe they were actually saying processees (whom processors act upon).

I've heard both, and the "-esseez" plural just seems less ambiguous on poor videoconferencing lines and recordings. "-esses" is a mouthful to pronounce.

Are we talking about pro-cesses or praw-cesses?

> Unless - IMO - you want to sound like a snob...

Really? I think it's the opposite. One does things like this because one is afraid of being assailed by pedants and made to feel inferior. This is why, I think, I hear people, mostly British, say things like "to so-and-so and I". They're afraid to use the wrong form or the pronoun and be scolded, so they overcorrect.

And about this:

> in general language evolves to have simpler rules with fewer exceptions rather than the other way around.

I don't think that's generally true. Rather, language changes in many ways, but one of them is the accumulation of exceptions to a formerly simple system. This gives us the complex paradigms of "be" and "go", for example.

> One does things like this because one is afraid of being assailed by pedants and made to feel inferior.

Do you pronounce "tortoise" like "bourgeoise" because you don't want to sound inferior?

I jest, but it's like your argument is making my case for me. Replace "snob" with "pedant" to see what I mean.

I enjoy intentionally mispronouncing words to my fiancee, and this one is definitely going into the rotation, so thank you for that! (Now, to figure out how to get "tortoise" into casual conversation.)

One of the comediennes on Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me delightfully pronounced tortoise TOR-toys. Apparently she'd never heard it spoken aloud before.

Let me guess, you’re one of them — those that pronounce “adjective” as aject-ive… :-)

I not sure what you're talking about. I'm referring to things where pronunciation is generally based on the etymology. I don't think the word "adjective" falls into this category. One could perhaps make a case for aluminum vs aluminium (cf: platinum), but those are pretty much different words that refer to the same thing.

"Process-eez" is the same word as "processes" with a pronunciation based on a misunderstanding (presumably) of the etymological "rules".

I don't think it's true that languages get simpler over time.

By and large they do. English, like all indo European languages, used to have many grammatical cases and verb forms. Now we mostly retain cases in pronouns, and most verbs are about two forms per tense.

Latin used to have all its cases suffixes, and today's Romance languages have dropped nearly all of them.

Not a linguist, but I think this is just a matter of proto-indo-european having complicated morphology and its descendants reverting to the mean.

A related reddit thread (I know, I know, sorry): https://old.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/o12hy0/instanc...

It's worth noting of course that there is more to grammar than morphology.

English has simple verb and noun morphology, but very complicated syntax and phonology. Hard to say that it’s uniformly more or less complex than Latin.

> 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.

Bemused (https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/can-bemuse-mean-amus...) is another word that is often understood "incorrectly".

A 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)

The 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.

To be fair, I can at least see roughly why the meaning changed. The word "beg" is being used in a strange (maybe archaic?) way, and it is also useful to encode the idea of giving rise to a follow-up question. The best outcome might just be for a different phrase to capture the original meaning, something like "assumes the conclusion".

Don'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.

I learned that “peruse” meant the exact opposite of what I thought when I got my GRE vocab study guide

Travesty is another one, thanks to sports announcers.

> 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.

People 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!

I thought this word meant "bothered" in the 1984 sense of plus=good

i dont think ive ever seen the definition prior

Yes, I also took it as wordplay on Doublespeak that found its way into casual slang.

Is 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.

For 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

It'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.

Don’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.

I'm way more nonplussed about this than you, I don't really think it's that special.

> It’s one of my favourite words

Wait, shouldn't it be the second one, right after _petrichor_?

A 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

Good point, stupid me!

In my opinion, that's a very ugly word for such a beautiful smell.

What's ugly about "petrichor"???

My opinion, of course. But it’s not pleasant looking or sounding.

I'm doing alright, thanks for asking.

This 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!

I 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.

When 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.

> 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"

Save yourself and your readers by not using this "word."

Guess 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.

As 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.

That 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'!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word

Despite being well-written, TFA left me nonplussed

Another one is "upshot". It's sometimes not even worth using the word because people think it means "upside".

In 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.

According to this source it comes directly from Latin: https://www.etymonline.com/word/nonplus

Well, also according to the article itself :)

Also, "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.

I've always thought that people misunderstood nonplussed because they interpret it as "not fussed".

Fascinating. 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!

Apparently, “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”.

Huh. Can't say I have ever thought or heard of several as "sevenish".

Anytime this word is used it sounds so much newspeak to me I forget it's a real one.

I'd love to see a demographic and geographic analysis of usage of the two meanings.

I 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.

Looks like the word carries its original meaning non plus

I totally get nonplussed confused with notplussed:

  !i++;

The 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"?

Running a dictionary seems like it takes a great deal of humility. You have to continually cede ground to people who know less than you.

I 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.

I feel less bad about “misusing” this word now (I had thought it meant indifferent instead of confused)

Faced with this kind of irritating confusion, one must try to stay nonchalant rather than nonplussed.

I 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.

I’ve only ever known nonplussed to mean indifferent and unbothered.

Nobody come for nonchalant!

It'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.

"recent usage"? When was this article written?

Dates on your articles bloggers!

There are dated examples in the article.

(2017)

I 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?

I 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.

I 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.

I could less.

So much less!

Frankly I'm nonplussed to hear about this word for the first time in my life.

"The common meaning of a little used word changed nearly 100 years ago."

...

So you'd say that you are completely nonplussed? Because I was so nonplussed by it that I felt it worth sharing here.

The 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!

You 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>

My 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.

I don't know if translations really count as the Word of God. If so, how do we know which translation when they differ?

Some 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.)

The 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.

I'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."

No cap, fam.

Seriously, I think a lot of what drives these conversations is that people get a bit emotional about what are really somewhat randomly-formed preferences.

However you first encountered the usage of a word will likely heavily influence what you think of as the 'correct' definition, unless you work to overcome your bias by actually studying the etymology and comparing it statistically against current trends. Obviously very few peeps will be down with that noise.

Singular "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.

I have no objection to avoiding assumptions about a person's gender. It's unfortunate in my opinion that we chose "they" which is gender-neutral but also plural. That is entirely where the issue is for me. I'd have no objection to a singular gender-neutral word (which unfortunately doesn't exist in English). "One" sometimes works, but often sounds too formal. Or reworking the sentence so that "they" is approprate, e.g. "Each person should do it for themselves" isn't terrible, and not too confusing, but better is either "People should do it for themselves" or "One should do it for oneself." The worst is something like "The manager decided that they should do it for themselves" which I see a lot, especially recently. Who is "they" referring to here? The manager? Some other group? It's confusing.

Yes I know that singular "they" has existed for a long time but nobody apparently told my English teachers who would circle it in red every time I accidentally used it.

You didn't invent singular "they" as a child, you were using it because that's what you'd naturally heard and picked up.

Then ignorant teachers told you that you were wrong and they were so successful in brainwashing you, that even after you have learned you were actually correct, you are still trying to argue you were wrong!

> I'd have no objection to a singular gender-neutral word (which unfortunately doesn't exist in English).

Yes it does. "He" is the gender neutral expression in English and has been since forever. It's just that politically correct people get bent out of shape about it.

It isn't gender neutral, it's a gender default. Unless you think it would be correct for the student handbook at an all-girls school to read "every student shall store his books in his assigned locker".

I do in fact think that would be correct.

It so weird that ships and boats somehow are female and are referred to using the word "she", when neutral gender "it" exists.

They are not female, they are an 'it', that is the correct grammatical form.

Referring to them as women (hence 'she') is simply an affectation.

> Yes I know that singular "they" has existed for a long time but nobody apparently told my English teachers who would circle it in red every time I accidentally used it.

I remember reading in the 80s or 90s there was a movement to actively eliminate it.

Yes, I learned (mostly from female teachers) that "he" should be interpreted as gender-neutral if the gender of a singular subject was unknown, e.g. "A writer should always consider his audience" did not imply that only males are writers. It would be nice if people could charitably assume that, but I understand that it can be problematic.

I purposefully and unapologetically try to refer to everyone as "they" these days. A person's gender is rarely relevant (and can often lead to stereotyping), so I see no need to mention it every time I refer to them. And it makes life a lot simpler.

While not strictly improper, this feels needlessly confrontational and pushing of an ideology. You might find you ruffle more feathers than you think by doing this.

Some people seem not to like it (most don't care), but nothing else gets special treatment in language (one doesn't refer to people of different races using different pronouns for example - there are special titles like sir/lord/reverend, but I try to avoid those too), and I think it's good to challenge people's assumptions around this kind of thing.