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

merriam-webster.com

21–30 of 337 posts

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

#21
post #5

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.

> It’s one of my favourite words Wait, shouldn't it be the second one, right after _petrichor_?

A this point I'm just waiting for a Webster article how some people understand "one of" to mean "the only" instead of "a member of the set of". This seems to be getting more common

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

#22
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.

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

#25
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.

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

#26

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.

> 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.

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

#27

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

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".

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

#29
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…

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