Radio Country: Can you be “plussed” instead of “nonplussed”?

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Can you be “plussed” instead of “nonplussed”?

Daily edition

Can you be "plussed" instead of "nonplussed"?

Discover why the word "nonplussed" has no traditional opposite — and how its meaning has become even more puzzling in modern usage.

Young troubled and confused woman scratching her head

N ewton's third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. While that concept is true in physics, there's no "Webster's law" insisting that each word has an equal and opposite term. In fact, there are plenty of unpaired words in English. One of the most confusing to be without an opposite is "nonplussed."

"Nonplussed" is an adjective that describes a person who is so surprised or confused by a situation that they don't know how to respond. "To be nonplussed" is often used to mean to be at a loss for words, for example. It's easy to assume the "non-" acts as a negating prefix, as in the words "noncommittal" or "nonexistent," but that linguistic principle doesn't apply to "nonplussed." While you can find "existent" (meaning "having reality or existence") in the dictionary, you won't find "plussed.""Non" isn't a prefix at all in the case of "nonplussed." It's not meant to negate another term; instead, it comes directly from the Latin non plus, which translates to "no more." "Nonchalant" and "disgruntled" follow a similar pattern — one cannot be simply "chalant." ("Gruntled" is found in some dictionaries, but it was created as a backformation in the 1930s to mean "pleased, contented," serving as the opposite to "disgruntled.")

However, things have gotten more complicated in recent decades with "nonplussed." While the usage of "being so shocked they don't know how to respond" has been in English since the 1600s, around the 1960s the word began to be used in American English in the exact opposite way. People began to use "nonplussed" to describe someone who was unperturbed — essentially making "nonplussed" an antonym of itself, as it can describe someone who's startled or relaxed. The latter isn't considered standard usage, but it is growing in popularity. So, while there's no "plussed," "nonplussed" has evolved into a redundancy to fill that void.