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

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

#141

Post by asveikau »

whlr wrote: post #97
ilitirit wrote: post #65

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…

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.

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

#142

Post by [deleted] »

impendia wrote: post #138
zarzavat wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait… do Americans not say whom?

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.

[deleted]

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

#143

Post by notnaut »

Angostura wrote: post #96
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’m entirely nonplussed by your use of ‘skunked’.

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!

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

#144

Post by ryandrake »

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…

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.

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

#147

Post by svat »

jtbayly wrote: post #8

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 s…

> "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”.)

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

#148

Post by thaumasiotes »

pc86 wrote: post #57
beretguy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#150

Post by SoftTalker »

Izkata wrote: post #125
SoftTalker wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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.
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