The word equivalent of 
, eg, “I was nonplussed to see a miniature elephant sleeping on the couch, until my brother told me he was just taking care of it for the neighbors.”
It means surprised and confused at the same time.
I think of it as “taken aback” – surprised and confused.
It means confused. My eighth-grade English teacher included it among words she wanted us to learn, and giving her great hotness we all did as we were asked.
Either “unfazed” or “confused,” depending on usage. I had to look it up once when I saw it being used in a context that made no sense in the usage I first learned.
I have always understood it as “confused”, with sort of a connotation of “overwhelmed”. That is, a particular state in which you are confused and unable to respond because your brain is struggling to process information it’s just received. The roots (“Non” + “plus” = “no” + “more”) lead me to think of it that way–you’ve hit your limit and are (momentarily) unable to deal with any more. Your buffer has overrun.
Those two words seem almost, but not quite, opposites to me. Unfazed means unaffected to me, or “taken in stride”. Confused – doesn’t.
It doesn’t mean subtraction, it means lack of addition!
mild cognitive dissonance
Yeah, that was exactly why I was confused. I can see why people would complain about a word taking on the exact opposite meaning or close to it, but I suppose you could make the same argument about the modern uses of “incredible” or “unbelievable.” Strictly speaking, “The Incredible Hulk” should be a pathological liar.
It means speechless with surprise, shock or confusion. You can think of “nothing more” to say at the moment.
Now for bonus points, what does bemused mean?
Bewildered. Some people think it means “amused,” and when the revolution comes they will be the second to be put against the wall.
Set upon by muses?
Now that one I have conflated. I don’t treat it as a synonym of amused, but I use it to mean amused bewilderment. Sort of a confusion that isn’t alarming or disconcerting.
When I saw the thread title, I immediately thought “It means either surprised or not surprised.” I knew that one meaning was the dictionary definition, and the other was the way it’s typically used, but I couldn’t remember which was which.
I prefer the “lost in thought” secondary definition, but I’m with you on the people who think it means “amused”.
I would give Bosstone a pass, though, since he only attributed connotations of amusement to it, which I could see. A state of “I have no idea what’s going on, but it’s kind of funny” could plausibly be described as “bemused” without trampling on the definition.
I always took it to mean unfazed or not bothered.
Huh. I always thought it meant unhappy. The common meaning was barely unhappy, while the real meaning was to be so unhappy as to be speechless. It just sounds like a word that came from 1984.
At first I was nonplussed to find out I was using the word wrong, but now I am simply bemused.
Works for me.
I generally don’t believe in 1:1 synonyms. Every word, no matter how closely related it is to another, has a different connotation.
Bewildered = confused in general
Puzzled = confused about a specific thing, likely temporarily
Baffled = confused about a specific thing, likely permanently without outside help
Bemused = confused but amused
And so on. If bemused only meant confused, I’d just use confused.