[HN Gopher] What's Going on with 'Nonplussed'? (2017)
___________________________________________________________________
What's Going on with 'Nonplussed'? (2017)
Author : rglullis
Score : 199 points
Date : 2024-04-29 12:19 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.merriam-webster.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.merriam-webster.com)
| debacle wrote:
| "The common meaning of a little used word changed nearly 100
| years ago."
|
| ...
| rglullis wrote:
| So you'd say that you are completely nonplussed? Because I was
| so nonplussed by it that I felt it worth sharing here.
| Karellen wrote:
| 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!
| awesomeideas wrote:
| 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>
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| I don't know if translations really count as the Word of
| God. If so, how do we know which translation when they
| differ?
| djur wrote:
| 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.)
| samatman wrote:
| 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.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 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.
| vasco wrote:
| I'm way more nonplussed about this than you, I don't really
| think it's that special.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| > It's one of my favourite words
|
| Wait, shouldn't it be the second one, right after _petrichor_?
| wongarsu wrote:
| 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
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Good point, stupid me!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| In my opinion, that's a very ugly word for such a beautiful
| smell.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| What's ugly about "petrichor"???
| Waterluvian wrote:
| My opinion, of course. But it's not pleasant looking or
| sounding.
| ryan-duve wrote:
| 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.
| jawns wrote:
| 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
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > 'Inflammable' means flammable? What a country!
|
| -Dr Nick
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I think "inflammable" is a fake word.
| wongarsu wrote:
| 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.
| Y_Y wrote:
| 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).
| wongarsu wrote:
| 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)
| Izkata wrote:
| 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.
| bxparks wrote:
| 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".
| Karellen wrote:
| > "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?
| bxparks wrote:
| 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.
| Karellen wrote:
| 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
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| 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...
| toast0 wrote:
| > 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/cle
| ave-t...
| bxparks wrote:
| 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
| fl7305 wrote:
| > 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.
| JosephGuerra wrote:
| Egregious is like that, if I remember correctly
| jtbayly wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Y_Y wrote:
| _Moi non plus_
| vidarh wrote:
| 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.
| djur wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| wongarsu wrote:
| 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
| inanutshellus wrote:
| 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.
| wongarsu wrote:
| 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.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| In case the word "plussed" came into the dictionary
| meaning "impressed"
| carabiner wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| that's not at all what they are trying to say....
| elicash wrote:
| I am excited to start slipping "plussed" casually into
| conversation.
| parpfish wrote:
| You should be thankful your coworkers don't already say that
| the "plus one" an idea/comment
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| I would be so nonplussed by this.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| https://youtube.com/shorts/Z9ifuTpljg0
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I'm nonloled about this situation.
| adamc wrote:
| I admit to not understanding why people assume meanings rather
| than look them up.
| tremon wrote:
| So... you're nonplussed about why people would pick up new
| words from casual usage rather than from books?
| da_chicken wrote:
| 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
| cryptonector wrote:
| 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.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| How did you learn your first language? Most people learn to
| speak before they learn to read and use a dictionary.
| svat wrote:
| > _" 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".)
| digitalsushi wrote:
| 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.
| andycowley wrote:
| As a Brit, I don't think I've ever encountered the latter
| meaning. I've only ever heard it to mean 'perplexed'.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Also a Brit, but I thought it meant "unbothered" until 5-6
| years ago.
| rorylawless wrote:
| Another Brit confirming this understanding of the word
| (although I just found out about the original meaning about a
| minute ago).
| kibwen wrote:
| 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".
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| "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...")
| zarzavat wrote:
| Wait... do Americans not say whom?
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| 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.
| topaz0 wrote:
| 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.
| impendia wrote:
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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.
| da_chicken wrote:
| 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.
| mikestew wrote:
| _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.
| kibwen wrote:
| 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".
| cryptonector wrote:
| > 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.
| beretguy wrote:
| As a non native English speaker, it's my first time seeing or
| hearing this word.
| pc86 wrote:
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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_.)
| DanielVZ wrote:
| 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.
| gadders wrote:
| I always knew it as perplexed. I eschew this inferior recent
| meaning.
| Angostura wrote:
| 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
| codeulike wrote:
| 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...
| kimbernator wrote:
| 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
| bjornlouser wrote:
| what about 'moot'. Do Brits screw that up like Americans? 'moot
| point'
| SamBam wrote:
| 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
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| A rare thing to be able to hear people talk who actually know
| what words mean.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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."
| causality0 wrote:
| _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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| 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.
| vsnf wrote:
| 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.
| nicoburns wrote:
| 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| Izkata wrote:
| > 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.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > 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.
| djur wrote:
| 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".
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I do in fact think that would be correct.
| rvba wrote:
| It so weird that ships and boats somehow are female and
| are referred to using the word "she", when neutral gender
| "it" exists.
| dfawcus wrote:
| 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.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| 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!
| slfnflctd wrote:
| 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.
| causality0 wrote:
| 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.
| djur wrote:
| 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.
| Angostura wrote:
| ... I'm entirely nonplussed by your use of 'skunked'.
| notnaut wrote:
| 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!
| stavros wrote:
| 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".
| djur wrote:
| 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.
| allknowingfrog wrote:
| It's a perfectly cromulent word.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| I think it should join "billion" in never being ever used again
| due to its ambiguity.
| kimbernator wrote:
| It just doesn't have the same ring to call someone a
| "milliardare"
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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
| paulddraper wrote:
| For the last several decades, every English speaking
| country has used the short billion (1e9).
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yep, even the BBC surrendered to the Americanism.
| dsign wrote:
| 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.
| slibhb wrote:
| 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.
| beretguy wrote:
| Not to be a pedant, but I see you are completely nonplussed
| about all this.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I'm not a literal pendant, but you have to admit it's a
| nonplus.
| huygens6363 wrote:
| You are literally nonplussed.
| seventytwo wrote:
| A+
| kalupa wrote:
| A-plussed?
| ithkuil wrote:
| Minused
| foobarian wrote:
| That begs the question, what will you do about it?
| jonhohle wrote:
| Begging the question, he will continue to do nothing.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Irregardless of begging, they should of been less of a lose
| cannon with they're word's
| dylan604 wrote:
| I feel like I've been hit by a lose cannon all my life.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| For all intensive purposes.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| This is a moot point that should be tabled.
| thrill wrote:
| We'll circle back to that later for readdress.
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| The issue is unpresidented.
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| The MCM architecture of the chip can be recognized by the
| multiple dice beneath the heat spreader.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| What a way to wreck havoc.
| ilitirit wrote:
| I bet he could care less.
| AxEy wrote:
| You beat me to it.
| easeout wrote:
| Some men just want to watch the dictionary burn
| Spivak wrote:
| Not burn, _expand_. New usages for words make the
| dictionary bigger.
| vundercind wrote:
| As per prior behavior, the poster's actions against this will
| be comprised of nothing.
| nvy wrote:
| Could of, would of, should of.
| scoofy wrote:
| Hopefully, some of the people in this thread understood what
| you were doing there.
| gizajob wrote:
| 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".
| lupire wrote:
| I sanction this comment.
| margalabargala wrote:
| 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.
| gizajob wrote:
| You might be correct, but it begs the question: where are
| your citations for that?
| margalabargala wrote:
| You would like a citation that people with an interest in
| rhetoric and logic tend to be pedantic and likely to
| correct others if they see an opportunity to do so?
|
| You must be new here :)
| paulddraper wrote:
| 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."
| shermantanktop wrote:
| The word you really need to worry about is "nonpedant."
| marcod wrote:
| Please, non plus.
|
| (original Latin meaning ;)
| kazinator wrote:
| No, they came for sentence-final prepositions, up for which
| nobody was left to stand.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| 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.
| airstrike wrote:
| > "Nonplussed" is like "disgruntled"; you can't be plussed, and
| you can't be gruntled.
|
| Color me doubleplussed
| defrost wrote:
| C double plussed is a whole other language, the American
| Engrish of Ye Olde English.
| Strang wrote:
| 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
| Strang wrote:
| Uh that was supposed to be https://ahdictionary.com
| ycombinete wrote:
| Collins dictionary is my go to. I avoid Miriam Webster.
| Unfortunately MW appears to have won the SEO wars.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > 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
| Macha wrote:
| One of these is not like the others. Toward as the opposite
| of untoward appears in shakespeare
| drivers99 wrote:
| "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://boo
| ks.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=kempt%2C+unkem...
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > 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_.
| da_chicken wrote:
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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.
| lxgr wrote:
| > 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > 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_.
| da_chicken wrote:
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| 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
| topaz0 wrote:
| 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I don't want my granddaughters never learning the meaning
| of "figuratively" because it's fallen out of use, having
| been replaced by "literally".
| sltkr wrote:
| > you can't be gruntled.
|
| Why? It's a perfectly cromulent word: https://comb.io/tVAKjq
| djur wrote:
| Not to be a pedant about the spelling of "pedant", but...
| denton-scratch wrote:
| But... it's not customary around here to pull people up for
| typos. At least, I avoid it unless it's funny.
| topaz0 wrote:
| I usually don't correct other people's typos, but they
| _are_ much more funny when they 're made by pedants.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Fair!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > "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.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > "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'.
| airstrike wrote:
| _> 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 wrote:
| Anytime this word is used it sounds so much newspeak to me I
| forget it's a real one.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Despite being well-written, TFA left me nonplussed
| metabagel wrote:
| 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.
| haunter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unpaired_word
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Another one is "upshot". It's sometimes not even worth using the
| word because people think it means "upside".
| poszlem wrote:
| Funnily enough, as a non-native speaker, I always thought
| "nonplussed" was a kind of Orwellian newspeak (like
| "doubleplusgood").
| lgeorget wrote:
| 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".
| kloch wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I totally get nonplussed confused with notplussed:
| !i++;
| Izkata wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| 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...
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Rhyming chipotle with aristotle is another good joke in this
| vein. You can mangle either one it's hilarious both ways.
| buescher wrote:
| Chipoteles!
| emmelaich wrote:
| This may be an attempt to distinguish it phonetically from
| processORs.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Maybe they were actually saying _processees_ (whom
| _processors_ act upon).
| umanwizard wrote:
| I've noticed it too and it seems to be getting more common. I'm
| pretty sure it's just hypercorrection.
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Let me guess, you're one of them -- those that pronounce
| "adjective" as aject-ive... :-)
| ilitirit wrote:
| 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".
| whlr wrote:
| I don't think it's true that languages get simpler over time.
| asveikau wrote:
| 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.
| whlr wrote:
| 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://ol
| d.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/o12hy0/instanc...
|
| It's worth noting of course that there is more to grammar
| than morphology.
| umanwizard wrote:
| 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.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > 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.
| ilitirit wrote:
| > 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.
| smrq wrote:
| 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.)
| mauvehaus wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| Are we talking about pro-cesses or praw-cesses?
| lxgr wrote:
| I've heard both, and the "-esseez" plural just seems less
| ambiguous on poor videoconferencing lines and recordings.
| "-esses" is a mouthful to pronounce.
| frereubu wrote:
| 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
| jason2323 wrote:
| Nobody come for nonchalant!
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| I thought this word meant "bothered" in the 1984 sense of
| plus=good
|
| i dont think ive ever seen the definition prior
| jayd16 wrote:
| Yes, I also took it as wordplay on Doublespeak that found its
| way into casual slang.
| bubble12345 wrote:
| 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!
| pvillano wrote:
| Looks like the word carries its original meaning _non plus_
| duxup wrote:
| 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.
| nonplus wrote:
| I'm doing alright, thanks for asking.
| talkingtab wrote:
| 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?
| ajmurmann wrote:
| 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.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| jrgoff wrote:
| 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.
| djur wrote:
| The period that "nonplussed" started developing this
| contrary meaning was the most literate and educated period
| in human history.
| 5040 wrote:
| 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._
| Terr_ wrote:
| > 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.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| 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.
| Terr_ wrote:
| 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.
| djur wrote:
| "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.
| mechanicalpulse wrote:
| > 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| 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.
| vundercind wrote:
| > 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]".
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| djur wrote:
| Why do you say that?
| spudlyo wrote:
| 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".
| vundercind wrote:
| 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.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > 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.
| dekervin wrote:
| 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.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Save yourself and your readers by not using this "word."
| rurp wrote:
| Hearing the word nonplussed always reminds me of this scene in
| Archer,
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kCwpregWfKc
| caymanjim wrote:
| 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.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| I never hear it in conversation or presentations or anything
| like that, but have encountered it reasonably often in
| novels.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| "recent usage"? When was this article written?
|
| Dates on your articles bloggers!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2017)
| JW_00000 wrote:
| There are dated examples in the article.
| rjmill wrote:
| 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.
| tremon wrote:
| 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.
| gms7777 wrote:
| I always read it as meaning something like "unfazed" before
| seeing someone get corrected on it.
| camdenreslink wrote:
| 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".
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I'd love to see a demographic and geographic analysis of usage of
| the two meanings.
| codeulike wrote:
| 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.
| crznp wrote:
| 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.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| 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!
| ilitirit wrote:
| I've always thought that people misunderstood _nonplussed_
| because they interpret it as "not fussed".
| anon946 wrote:
| Bemused (https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/can-bemuse-mean-
| amus...) is another word that is often understood "incorrectly".
| parpfish wrote:
| I learned that "peruse" meant the exact opposite of what I
| thought when I got my GRE vocab study guide
| unzadunza wrote:
| Travesty is another one, thanks to sports announcers.
| n4r9 wrote:
| 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)
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| technothrasher wrote:
| 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.
| cbolton wrote:
| 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"?
| ignormies wrote:
| > 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
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I could less.
|
| So much less!
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| 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.
| mkaic wrote:
| 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!
| Uehreka wrote:
| 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.
| tejohnso wrote:
| 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.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| According to this source it comes directly from Latin:
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/nonplus
| bzhang255 wrote:
| Well, also according to the article itself :)
| pavlov wrote:
| Faced with this kind of irritating confusion, one must try to
| stay nonchalant rather than nonplussed.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 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.
| kazinator wrote:
| 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.
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| 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.
| LASR wrote:
| 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.
| cryptonector wrote:
| 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.
| Gimpei wrote:
| 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.
| barryrandall wrote:
| It's apparently so hard to use a dictionary that people
| accidentally created a new meaning for a word.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I feel less bad about "misusing" this word now (I had thought it
| meant indifferent instead of confused)
| lachaux wrote:
| 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.
| dfawcus wrote:
| 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'!
| Modified3019 wrote:
| 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".
| Valodim wrote:
| Huh. Can't say I have ever thought or heard of several as
| "sevenish".
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