{"id":18454,"date":"2022-05-31T17:17:31","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T00:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=18454"},"modified":"2022-06-12T22:31:05","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T05:31:05","slug":"nonplussed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2022\/05\/31\/nonplussed\/","title":{"rendered":"nonplussed"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>In a book I\u2019m reading, the narration uses the word <i>nonplussed<\/i> in a way that implies that it means a character is unbothered by something.<\/p>\r\n<p>I initially assumed that was a diction mistake, but I checked <a href=\"https:\/\/unabridged.merriam-webster.com\/collegiate\/nonplussed\">my dictionary<\/a> just to be sure, and was astonished to find, in addition to the traditional meaning, a second definition:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>2. <i>chiefly US<\/i> : not bothered, surprised, or impressed by something<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p>There\u2019s an explanatory note:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>The use of nonplussed to mean \"unimpressed\" is an Americanism that has become increasingly common in recent decades and now appears frequently in published writing. It apparently arose from confusion over the meaning of <i>nonplussed<\/i> in ambiguous contexts, and it continues to be widely regarded as an error.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p>I\u2019ve never seen this usage before, and even though I\u2019m usually more or less a descriptivist, I hereby go on record as being opposed to this usage.<\/p>\r\n<p>But I imagine that I\u2019ll eventually get used to it.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-usage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18469,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18454\/revisions\/18469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}