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

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

#211

Post by giraffe_lady »

da_chicken wrote: post #201
denton-scratch wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Englis…

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.

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

#212

Post by nvy »

foobarian wrote: post #69
slibhb wrote: post #23

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.

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

Could of, would of, should of.

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

#213

Post by Terr_ »

ajmurmann wrote: post #91
talkingtab wrote: post #78

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…

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 origi…

> 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.

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

#214

Post by scoofy »

foobarian wrote: post #69
slibhb wrote: post #23

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.

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

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

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

#215

Post by djur »

ajmurmann wrote: post #91
talkingtab wrote: post #78

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…

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 origi…

"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.

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

#216

Post by djur »

ryandrake wrote: post #144
ajmurmann wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 origi…

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. M…

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

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

#217

Post by djur »

Spivak wrote: post #199
vundercind wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 misunderstoo…

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.

Why do you say that?

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

#218

Post by djur »

vidarh wrote: post #82
esperent wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 example…

"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.

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

#219

Post by whlr »

asveikau wrote: post #141
whlr wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#220

Post by kimbernator »

mnw21cam wrote: post #154
djur wrote: post #20

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.

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