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

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

#301

Post by seabass-labrax »

da_chicken wrote: post #200
zarzavat wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait… do Americans not say whom?

We do, but "who" is acceptable in both tenses. There's no reason to ever use "whom" because it's the only one you can use wrong. "To whom did you give the book?" is more often "Who'd you give the book to?" complete with the similarly forbidden preposition.

Yet, among those with whom I associate, "Who didja..." is more common than the semantically equivalent elision "Who'd you", probably because it is ambiguous whether the latter is in the past or present tense.

(For context, I live in south-west England, have an RP accent, and 'whom' was genuinely the word that felt most natural to me when writing this post.)

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

#302

Post by ajhurliman »

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.

I always thought Google+ should've ditched the "dislike" button for a "nonplussed" button.

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

#304

Post by rendaw »

I think the descriptivist vs prescriptivist debate often misses the point. Language shifts aren't bad in themselves but some language shifts reduce useful specificity in a language. Like if "literally" no longer means "literally", how do you precisely communicate "literally"? Language shifts can also impart the ability to communicate new things.

Rather than an article that says "this now means X" or "this should mean Y so using it to mean X is wrong" I'd like an article that analyzes the functional gains and losses of these changes and whether they suggest resisting the change or not on that basis.

It sounds like "perplexed" is a fine and common replacement for "nonplussed", although similarly it doesn't sound like nonplussed adds any meaning over "unimpressed".

Is this the "Who is Taylor Swift dating now?" of grammarians?

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

#306

Post by naniwaduni »

margalabargala wrote: post #282
gizajob wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m fairly nonplussed at what has happened to “begging the question” - its usage now is an inversion of its original philosophical meaning as a form of fallacy. It’s common usage is a way of saying “the question arises”.

I take objection to the characterization of "begging the question" having a changed/incorrect meaning. I assert that the "original philosophical meaning" is the fad idiom, and the common usage is a true parsing of the words unrelated to the idiom. "This begs the question of why X Y Z" is just a shortening of "this [thing you said] begs [that] the question [be asked] of why X Y Z". I think the only reason there's any…

You see a lot of this kind of thing: "spiders aren't bugs", "whales aren't fish", "strawberries aren't berries"—no, words mean things, unfortunately, even if that's a little inconvenient for taxonomers!

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

#307

Post by n4r9 »

technothrasher wrote: post #263
n4r9 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A list of ones I've seen in this thread or know of already: * Nonplussed (miffed) * Ambivalent (conflicted) * Factoid (incorrect statement) * Bemused (confused) * Peruse (read thoroughly) * Travesty (distortion) * Transpire (to be revealed) * Literally (in actual fact) There's also "beg the question" which is often used to mean "naturally give rise to the question" but I believe originally meant "assumes the answer w…

The modern colloquial usage of "begs the question" bugs the heck out of me. I try not to get too pedantic about language usage, but that one just sticks in my craw. I think because it's actually quite useful to understand when one is begging the question, and it feels a disservice to water down the phrase.

To be fair, I can at least see roughly why the meaning changed. The word "beg" is being used in a strange (maybe archaic?) way, and it is also useful to encode the idea of giving rise to a follow-up question. The best outcome might just be for a different phrase to capture the original meaning, something like "assumes the conclusion".

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

#309

Post by happyraul »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #299
paulddraper wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explaining the joke: "Begging the question" is an expression that properly means "assuming the conclusion," i.e. circular reasoning. However, the comment above deliberately uses the incorrect meaning "raising the question."

Good explanation except for the words "proper" and "incorrect".

The irony is that we can't be sure of that, since "proper" and "incorrect" may mean something else.

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

#310

Post by lupire »

camdenreslink wrote: post #227
rjmill wrote: post #105

I knew it! Context clues typically imply the ("wrong") meaning, so I misinterpreted this word for a while until I used it out loud, and my pedantic family corrected me. But so many usages of the word are vague, and the difference between "perplexed" and "ambivalent" is not super important in most stories. (Whoever is nonplussed is not likely to take action on the situation.) I had a feeling that some authors were usi…

Another word that is often used incorrectly. "Ambivalent" doesn't mean "unruffled" or "unbothered". It actually means to have two (possibly strong) contradictory emotions. It's more like "bittersweet" or to be "of two minds".

But it can mean "unmoved"!

In a metaphorical physical sense where an object is immobilized by two opposing forces.

But it's direct. It's "both valences" ("valence is loosely like " value"), like in chemistry. "Ambi", which implies that there are only two possibilities, instead of "bi" which merely means 2 actual among many possible.

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