Despite being well-written, TFA left me nonplussed
What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
31–40 of 337 posts
Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#32I'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 wor…
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.
Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#33Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#34I 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 s…
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
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.
Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
> ‘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.
Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#36I was only aware of the new definition, not the original one. I think the new definition has taken strong root in the U.S.
Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#37Merriam-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'…
> "Nonplussed" is like "disgruntled"; you can't be plussed, and you can't be gruntled.
Color me doubleplussed
Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#38This 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.
Egregious is like that, if I remember correctly
Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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.
Re: What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)
#40This 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".