Originally published at: Building collapses as man walks right by, nonplussed | Boing Boing
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Scooped…
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and the comments are here if anyone wants to discuss the shape of a Ford Fiesta 
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Pet peeve time! “Nonplussed” means the exact opposite of that: thrown off balance or disturbed. You wanted “unfazed.” Nonplussed | Definition of Nonplussed by Merriam-Webster
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Or as the internet would have it, “unphased”
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So, plussed?
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Well, he was lucky not to be flatyplussed! (But this wasn’t Oz, thankfully.)
Ugh, was coming here to note the same.
Sadly, through brute force of misusage, “nonplussed” is gaining recognition as its complete opposite meaning. Indeed, per Oxford Languages (Google’s supplier, for one):
- INFORMAL•NORTH AMERICAN not disconcerted; unperturbed.
Which begs the question – can nothing be done about definition creep?
(^^ get it?)
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Here in the United States it can also mean “not disconcereted; unperturbed.”
Words…
EDIT: and before people get in a tizzy over it, words change definition all the time. What’s a bunny? Used to be a squirrel. Ambidextrous used to mean taking bribes from both sides of an activity. Gamut referred to the lowest note of all on a musical scale, then eventually the whole scale, and now means “the entire range” of something. Girl meant kid, until boy came into vogue, leaving girl referring to… everyone else not a boy.
Words, words, words…
Yet still rated an entry in the dictionary. And will continue to be used this way I’m pretty certain.
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@cepheus42 read the rest of the M-W entry. “It continues to be widely regarded as an error.”
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But clearly not by Merriam-Webster who put it down as the second definition.
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“This is an error, but as 320 million people use it this way, we’re kinda going to have to just go with it at this point.”
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That is of course the long term correct answer, and any descriptive linguist would agree. But before usage changes, it starts out as a mistake. If I use the word “lawnmower” to refer to my pet iguana, I can’t expect to be understood, and I can’t defend it by just saying “Hey, language changes.”
“Nonplussed” is in the gray area right now where it is used widely enough in the incorrect sense that it’s definitely shifting, and it will surely be universally considered correct before too much longer, but we’re not there yet. If you use the word that way, a whole lot of people are going to conclude that you don’t know what it means.
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It’s fair, I’ll agree with you. The problem with nonplussed is that the new definition is the exact opposite of the old one, which leads to confusion between speakers from different regions. I’m going to have to excise it from my vocabulary now.
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I agree. Best practice is probably to avoid it altogether at this point. It’s too bad, it was a really good word.
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inflammable
impregnable
cleave
clip
dust
ravel
table (in the sense of a bill)
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That was a helluva thing to catch on video like that. I am suspicious.
Maybe. It’s Ring doorbell footage, they’re recording all the time
Ahhhh… it was the fake pans and zooms that got me. The footage was needlessly editorialized for effect.
