I'm nonplussed and bemused with this fulsome review

[cmyk]

@Malleus_Incus_Stapes

So what’s the ultimate, then?

(wooosh)

[Gala_Matrix_Fire]

Now I’m enervated to go out and do something about it!

[Rigamarole]

@purplehorseshoe

Growing up, the word “outstanding” meant, to my young mind, “great, good, splendid, magnificent.”

Then one day in 5th grade my teacher starting going on about a list of “students who had work outstanding” (meaning undone) and quite a few of us had bemused (as in confused) looks on our faces.

Pretty sure those 2 uses of outstanding have been common for a long time. It’s not that the meaning is changing or that either one is “wrong”, they are just homonymic.

[NinjaChick]

@RitterSport

Whoa, when I read that, my head literally exploded!

(At least “sanctioned” has had those two conflicting meanings for a while. But, good addition, anyway.)

No no no no no no no no no no no no NO!*

Other words: fine, misuse them. You’re an idiot for doing so, and it’s offensive to boot because grammar is there for a reason. But I understand, dual meanings make things confusing, people are stupid and just misuse words out of ignorance - again, fine. The definition of ‘literally’ is not and has never been confusing. It means ‘in a literal manner’. It is derived from the Latin for ‘to the letter’. There is no excuse for using ‘literally’ when you mean ‘in no way is this an accurate, to-the-letter account’.

I’m actually planning on writing to both my state and federal representatives pushing for summary execution for those who use literally inappropriately, but somehow I don’t think my idea will be successful.

(…er, yes, I’m some what of a prescriptivist, because descriptive grammar amounts to, "I don’t know, let’s all be lazy and stupid and let our language rot away because people are complete idiots and there’s no need for actual laws of grammar and I can’t be bothered to care and also I’m ugly and my mother is fat and dropped me on my head repeatedly as a child.)

*I get the joke, but this is a huge pet peeve.

[Larry_Borgia]

You all should peruse this relevant Cracked article.

ETA: mildly NSFW.

[TWDuke]

@RitterSport

Nonplussed used to mean “to put at a loss as to what to think, say, or do; bewilder”, but is beginning to mean “unimpressed”. Aside: let’s face it, it really seems like it should mean “unimpressed”.

How would you figure that out from the context? “She walked into the room with the duck on her head. He was nonplussed.” You can’t!

I have a friend who consistently uses this word to mean “unimpressed,” and somehow works it into every conversation. The first time I noticed it I thought I didn’t know her well enough to correct her. Thirty years later, I’m not sure how to bring it up tactfully.

Similarly, bemused used to mean “to cause to be bewildered, confuse” or “to cause to be engrossed in thought”, but now it’s starting to mean “amused”, or maybe “wryly amused”. “He was bemused when she walked into the room with a duck on her head” – what does it mean?

I’m… not sure I knew this. It’s not a word I use, but it may have misled me in the past. Therefore, I hate it and demand that it be purged it from the English language. Just use “confused” or “amused,” and feel free to add “slightly” or “somewhat” when necessary.

Fulsome – that’s even worse! Does it mean “excessive or insincere”, as in “he gave her fulsome praise”? Or, does it mean full, rich, or abundant, as in “he gave her fulsome praise”? Now, people are also starting to use it as a pseudo-intellectual way of saying “full” – “we need to give this problem a fulsome review.” Ack!

Those people should be shot (but not literally).

(Anyway, don’t get me started on words like bi-weekly or bi-monthly, which could mean “twice per…” or “every two…” – talk about worthless!)

When I worked in publishing, “bimonthly” was universally understood to mean every two months. (Twice a month was “semimonthly” and every two weeks was “fortnightly.”) It’s not a word I’ve noticed in wide use outside of the industry.

[commasense]

I think we should table this discussion until next week, when we can table it.

Table as a verb has two contradictory meanings, one in use in the United States and the other in the remainder of the English-speaking world. In the United States, the motion to table (or “lay on the table”) is a proposal to suspend consideration of a pending motion, while in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, to “table” a motion (or “place on the table”) is the means to commence discussion on a proposal.

Just last week, a business acquaintance of mine said that his committee had tabled an issue, and I had no idea which sense he meant, and unfortunately didn’t have the chance to ask him. (I think it was the latter of the two above.)

[Nava]

@Quartz

Do you have any citations for these new usages? Because I’ve yet to hear them.

I got pitted for saying many foreigners were amused in a “gallows-humor / irony / schadenfreunde / laugh because the other option is to cry and you don’t have kleenex handy” kind of way over the way our American bosses reacted after 9-11 (not the US government, but the executives doing things like forbid all travel worldwide); apparently if I’d used “bemused” it wouldn’t have been offensive. I can assure you that “being told you can’t go back home for over a week after what should have been a 12-hour meeting” doesn’t cause people to be either “lost in thought” or “confused.”

[BigT]

@NinjaChick

No no no no no no no no no no no no NO!*

Other words: fine, misuse them. You’re an idiot for doing so, and it’s offensive to boot because grammar is there for a reason. But I understand, dual meanings make things confusing, people are stupid and just misuse words out of ignorance - again, fine. The definition of ‘literally’ is not and has never been confusing. It means ‘in a literal manner’. It is derived from the Latin for ‘to the letter’. There is no excuse for using ‘literally’ when you mean ‘in no way is this an accurate, to-the-letter account’.

I’m actually planning on writing to both my state and federal representatives pushing for summary execution for those who use literally inappropriately, but somehow I don’t think my idea will be successful.

(…er, yes, I’m some what of a prescriptivist, because descriptive grammar amounts to, "I don’t know, let’s all be lazy and stupid and let our language rot away because people are complete idiots and there’s no need for actual laws of grammar and I can’t be bothered to care and also I’m ugly and my mother is fat and dropped me on my head repeatedly as a child.)

*I get the joke, but this is a huge pet peeve.

But, the thing is, literally has been used to add emphasis for quite a long time. Yet, other words with dual definitions get a pass.

The problem with prescriptivism is that it is entirely arbitrary. The rules that they follow came from descriptivists. It’s not like we came up with the rules first, and only then started speaking. But prescriptivists seem to pick some random point in the past to stop listening to the people who discovered the rules, and instead focus on making people follow those rules.

Now, which behavior is the behavior of smart people in general? Taking the time to study the world, or using the past to tell people how to act?

[BigT]

Oops. Forgot my quotes, and the edit time has passed:

George Colman and David Garrick, The Clandestine Marriage (1766), p. 61:

I look upon it, Madam, / to be one of the luckiest circumstances of my life, / that I have this moment the honour of receiving / your commands, and the satisfaction of confirming / with my tongue, what my eyes perhaps have but too / weakly expressed—that I am literally—the humblest / of your servants. /

Frances Brooke, The History of Emily Montague, Vol. IV (1769), pp. 82-3:

I am just come from a walk in the wood behind the house, with my mother and Emily; I want you to see it before it loses all its charms; in another fortnight, its present variegated foliage will be literally humbled in the dust.

@p. 175

He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.

All quotes originally found by Language Log: Literally: a history