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USAGE In standard use, nonplussed means ‘surprised and confused’:: the hostility of the new neighbor’s refusal left Mrs. Walker nonplussed. In North American English, a new use has developed in recent years, meaning ‘unperturbed’—more or less the opposite of its traditional meaning: | hoping to disguise his confusion, he tried to appear nonplussed . This new use probably arose on the assumption that non- was the normal negative prefix and must therefore have a negative meaning. Although the use is common, it is not yet considered standard. The preferred spelling is nonplussed. Not yet? My inner prescriptivist simply froths silently at the mouth.
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My inner prescriptivist simply froths silently at the mouth.
A solution would be to exterminate every speaker you encounter who uses the newer, deviant meaning. After a while, and with luck in evading the long arm of the law, you would live a better, simpler, and unannoying world.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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A solution would be to correct every speaker you encounter who uses the newer, deviant meaning. After a while you would live a better, simpler, and unannoying world. Fixed™ How far does your tolerance for the misuse of words go, Jim? No, no. Don't answer that. I could care less. 
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How far does your tolerance for the misuse of words go, Jim?Non plus ultra. 
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I'm just ultra nonplussed.
(Ultra non-nonplussed, for all you North American English speakers).
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I think you two should just take this outside... ;0)
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As Eco once said, in his charmingly wobbly English: "The tongue is perforating the cheek."
I just thought it interesting's all. (You know I also have an inner descriptivist, right?)
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(You know I also have an inner descriptivist, right?)
I pretty much assumed you did. (We all have little battling grammarian homunculi in us.) Great Econic quote.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Perhaps prescriptivists need to be more plussed (or is that less plussed, I forget) and definitely less chalant. I is nonchalantly ambivalent to this non-plussing nonsense... 
Last edited by The Pook; 06/17/08 01:03 AM.
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Objecting to word usages of others does not alone make one a prescriptivist, but the nonprescriptivist who does that is nonetheless likely to be taken by some for a prescriptivist.
The above statement is not intended as a breakdown of thread participants.
Dictionary.com: No results found for objectionist.
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A solution would be to exterminate every speaker you encounter who uses the newer, deviant meaning. After a while, and with luck in evading the long arm of the law, you would live a better, simpler, and unannoying world.
Hey, now there's a good solution! In Kentucky, and possibly Texas, a valid excuse for homicide is, "He needed killin'."
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Hey, now there's a good solution! In Kentucky, and possibly Texas, a valid excuse for homicide is, "He needed killin'." Found this little tidbit This brings to mind the reported exchange “many years ago between the Chief Justice of Texas and an Illinois lawyer visiting that state. ‘Why is it,’ the visiting lawyer asked, ‘that you routinely hang horse thieves in Texas but oftentimes let murderers go free?’ ‘Because,’ replied the Chief Justice, ‘there never was a horse that needed stealin!
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Objecting to word usages of others does not alone make one a prescriptivist, but the nonprescriptivist who does that is nonetheless likely to be taken by some for a prescriptivist. This is where the word proscriptivist comes in handy. The classic proscriptivists may have a stable of prescriptions to fall back on but their motivation is in supressing usages other than those they use themselves. Dictionary.com: No results found for objectionist. There's probably a lot of words of the form ROOT+ist that don't have primary entries.
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When I was a prescriptivist I felt much as Hydra does about the semantic shift, which I call "smearing." After turning in my credentials and joining the de-'s, I still disapprove of the practice, preferring instead to coin a new word, though I no longer froth
A drive drive drive drive is the flight of a ball in a baseball game, the outcome of which results in an automobile trip by the all-time home-run champion to a venue in which culturally-acquired concern for the proliferation of a keychain semiconductor memory is sponsored through the profits of a lumber mill whose continued existence depends upon the legalization of dredging a shallow river intended to convey logs downstream for further processing
dalehileman
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This is where the word proscriptivist comes in handy. The classic proscriptivists may have a stable of prescriptions to fall back on but their motivation is in supressing usages other than those they use themselves. Then there are those who do not categorize themselves as prescriptivist or proscriptivist, and who may object to such categorization, who sustain certain usages and reject others ad hoc.
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oh, those folks are just bemused.
-joe (bebothered and bewildebeest) friday
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I've never paid all that much heed to the whole precriptivism vs descriptivism thing. I just try to use words accurately without getting too precious about it. But I do have a question for the latter camp: Do you lot honestly accept the unintentional abuse and misuse of words without batting an eyelid? just smile magnanimously, saying to yourself: " I know what he means"? doesn't that take us all onto the slippery slope of Humpty-dumptyism?
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Do you lot honestly accept the unintentional abuse and misuse of words without batting an eyelid? just smile magnanimously, saying to yourself: "I know what he means"? doesn't that take us all onto the slippery slope of Humpty-dumptyism?
Of course not, only the prescriptivist-damned, wild-eyed, anarchist, straw man descriptivist does that. But at the grammar maven end of the P to D spectrum, one finds all kinds of silly admonitions and ukases against many perfectly normal usages: e.g., split infinitives, preposition-ended sentences, which-that in non-restrictive-restrictive clauses, to decimate meaning to destroy. Most descriptive linguists whom I known are perfectly comfortable using Standard English and in correcting solecisms in student papers. They also don't come completely unhinged if somebody uses a perfectly grammatical ain't in informal varieties of the mother tongue, as many on the other side of the aisle do.
My real argument with the P-camp is how often they are just plain wrong in their explanations of how or why some usage or bit of grammar has come about. They use faulty logic, flights of fancy, or mistaken history to shore up their arbitrary condemnations of somebody's language. In these cases, I find myself shaking my head in disbelief: can somebody who alleges to cherish language so much but so clueless about it at such a fundamental level. One reason given, over and over again, is that "bad grammar" reduces the possibility of communication, but the thing being corrected is usually not only rather common, but oftentimes perfectly grammatically correct, and there is slight to no chance of ambiguity or misunderstanding.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Do you lot honestly accept the unintentional abuse and misuse of words without batting an eyelid?
I've lost count of how many times I've posted the link to this Language Log post on that subject. On the other hand, almost everything that's said in English today is ungrammatical if you go back far enough in the history of the language. Humpty Dumpty is all of us and a word means what we all choose it to mean.
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That was an interesting read, thanks for re-posting the link
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Do you lot honestly accept the unintentional abuse and misuse of words ... Unintentional abuse. Is that the same as neglect? Unintentional misuse I can fathom, just not sure whether it is possible to abuse unintentionally. (Does that answer your question?) 
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Sure you can unintentionally abuse words (1. "use [something] to bad effect").
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