241–250 of 337 posts
It might actually be from non plus ultra: nothing more beyond.
When you've reached the non plus ultra point in your journey, your ass has been nonplussed.
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.
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'…
American Heritage is much better. They respond to usage, but much more conservatively. And their entries will actually have brief explanations from their "usage panel" about ambiguous or changing meanings. https://dictionary.com
Also "the proof is in the pudding" this is opposite to what the original meaning was - which is that the proof is not in the pudding. It's in the eating.
Can't really even tell what people even mean these days.
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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 hav…
I do think this is what the dictionary should say. It describes actual usage, including disagreements about it.
By the way, I do think there is a place for linguistic prescriptions, it's just in style guides rather than dictionaries. E.g., fine for the Economist to decide "literally" will only be used in its literal sense in their pages.
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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 .
"Literally" is allowed to have a valid and true definition of "figuratively" because exaggeration and hyperbole are used for rhetoric and expression. That's a vital and popular way language is used, and in the case of "literally" it is so commonly encountered that it worth noting in descriptive texts that it's common.
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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.