I'm nonplussed about "nonplussed." (Or am I?)

[a little rant]

Yesterday evening The New Republic informed us, over at Bluesky, that “Donald Trump wants you to believe that he’s totally nonplussed by Time magazine’s February cover, which features Elon Musk—not the president—behind the Resolute Desk.”

Lest that statement left you nonplussed, or merely bemused, TNR then went on to clarify the, or at least their, point, adding “Trump Hilariously Plays It Cool Over Time Cover of Elon Musk” and, for good measure in the body of the article, “Trump tried to play it off as if he were totally unbothered by the cover.”¹

Shots fired.

“Nonplussed,” our friends at Merriam-Webster inform us, means “unsure about what to say, think, or do: perplexed.”

Which is certainly not how The New Republic used it, not even vaguely.

So what gives?

Ah but, M-W adds: “Nonplussed” can also be taken to mean “not bothered, surprised, or impressed by something.” And, with a rotation of the knife, they note: “chiefly US.”

First things first, I must note that I could, but of course will not, name two celebrated UK authors of the type generally known as “literary” who had to be stopped, in copyediting, from using “nonplussed” to mean “cool as a cucumber” (and the eagerness with which they accepted being corrected made it clear that they were not intentionally wielding the word in its “chiefly US” meaning to get down in the mud and the muck and the mire with us colonial hoi polloi).

Second things second, I fancy myself a bit of a prescriptodescriptivist, only too happy to do my bit to help nudge the English language along in its meanderingly natural way when it strikes me that a point of evolution is helpful, illuminating, graceful, nonconfounding, etc., and to do my best to put my big clodhoppered foot down when I think that an ostensible evolution is merely a devolution in sheep’s clothing: the epoxying enshrinement of an entirely unnecessary and unhelpful alteration based on error and misperception.²

If, for instance, you wish to use the word “performative” in its newerfangled meaning of “done or expressed for the sake of appearance, esp. to impress others or to improve one’s own image (typically with the implication of insincere intent or superficial impact),” then, I’d say, more power to you, as the newerfangled definition doesn’t in any way that I can see negate any of the word’s older definitions, particularly that oddball (to me) “being or relating to an expression (such as a word or statement) that performs the act it specifies or that effects a transaction.”³ And, more important (at least to me), no one will not know precisely what you mean.

But if you’re intent on using “hoi polloi” to mean “aristocracy” because it sounds to you like “hoity-toity,” or “bemused” to mean “wryly amused” because it feels Nick and Nora Charles–ish to use it thus, or “nonplussed” to mean “chillaxed” because it sort of kind of sounds as if it should or at least might mean that, then I don’t think you’re doing the English language, or yourself, or the notion of clarity any big favors. Plus, to be sure, you’re pushing once useful and eloquent words toward meaninglessness and uselessness.⁴

Which begs the question . . .

Nope. Not today, Satan.

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P.S. Do I think that The New Republic brandished “nonplussed” as they did as a kind of malicious weapon—that is, did they do it specifically to get a rise out of, well, me? Or do they (or at least their one online representative in this case), with a full sense of unselfconscious rectitude, embrace the (good lord but this just sticks in my craw) “chiefly US” redefinition? Or do they simply not have a clue?

I have not a clue.

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Cover photograph: the great Marie Dressler, in Dinner at Eight.

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Department of Taking Care of Taking Care of Business

Thank you all for being here, and thank you, especially, to subscribers, and especially especially to paying subscribers. I quote my friend the superb Connie Schultz: “You don’t have to pay to read my writing. I understand that not everyone can do so, and I am grateful to those of you who do because you make it possible for me to keep writing.”

Sallie is grateful too.

1. All things taken into account, I’m surprised that TNR’s Bluesky post included that “that” in “wants you to believe that he’s,” which is the sort of “that” that I tend to favor as part of a well-made sentence’s bone structure but that many folk, particularly those who are counting characters, would strike out as unnecessary. Not to mention “tried to play it off as if he were”—rather than “was”—totally unbothered,” sans that abandoned abandonment of the subjunctive that many folk, perhaps the same folk, feel makes text sound modern and unpretentious. (I’m not bothered by pretentiousness, said the fellow with the noncomical “sans.”)

Also: Time magazine isn’t published every week anymore? (See “February cover.”) Who knew.

2. My god, I’m beginning to sound like William Safire tripping balls.

(“Beginning to?” I hear at least a few of you inquire bemusedly.)

3. Thus, we are told, “I now pronounce you man and wife” is a performative utterance, as is “I apologize.” Not, um, that the former has anything to do with the latter.

4. See as well the periodically proposed (at least online, where people periodically propose all sorts of disingenuous slop) notion that “woah” is a magnificent evolution of the English language and not an increasingly inescapable typing error (see as well, as well, “pharoah”).