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

merriam-webster.com

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

#231

Post by denton-scratch »

djur wrote: post #221
denton-scratch wrote: post #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'…

Not to be a pedant about the spelling of "pedant", but...

But... it's not customary around here to pull people up for typos. At least, I avoid it unless it's funny.

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

#232

Post by denton-scratch »

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…

> 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.

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

#233

Post by ithkuil »

huygens6363 wrote: post #48
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.

You are literally nonplussed.

Minused

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

#234

Post by allknowingfrog »

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’.

It's a perfectly cromulent word.

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

#236

Post by School-Cotton »

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.

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.

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

#237

Post by denton-scratch »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #203
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 .

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.

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

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

#238

Post by pessimizer »

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.

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

#240

Post by SamBam »

bjornlouser wrote: post #145
andycowley wrote: post #15

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

what about 'moot'. Do Brits screw that up like Americans? 'moot point'

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

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