The “Nonplussed” Problem (2011) | Hacker News Reader

The “Nonplussed” Problem (2011)

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30 pointsTomte68 comments

There's a very simple metric I use for this - do people understand what I mean or does language choice confuse them?

Once you adopt this metric, your whole life is better. You don't worry about misusing words, you stop using acronyms from your last job when you interview, you stop making that joke to your wife that she never gets and is instead annoyed, etc.

I agree with everything but the last one! Some jokes are meant to grate.

I think I mostly avoid these words because of the ambiguity -- I know I know what they mean, but I also know that other people use them for other things, so as a result, they can't be used. "decimate" is a word I'd like to use on occasion, but I know that the real meaning and the common meaning are pretty much opposites. Best to avoid.

A trend I've noticed is that people take longer words that sound like shorter words, and start using them to "sound smart". Consider "utilization" and "usage", which are just synonyms for "use". Start throwing around three letter words when you could use an eleven letter word and people will think you're dumb.

I still call a pushbutton switch "momentary on", though. I hope people don't think that means that the circuit turns on after a delay.

You know what "decimate" meant, but what it means in modern English is different. It's less the "real" meaning than the "original" meaning, but age doesn't make it more correct. "axing a question" is over a thousand years old, but its acceptability depends on your audience, not any inherent realness of meaning.

The people who collectively decided what words mean centuries ago were not special. We are them, just with smartphones.

It is objectively bad when not-very-literate people guess that a rarer word means the same as a more familiar word that it sounds a bit like and drown out the people who made a distinction.

That's because it is destroying useful tools for no gain. The word used to mean X, not Y, whereas now it's just a pretentious version of Y.

"Decimate" may not be a terribly significant word to use/lose, but that's not a refutation of the pattern of loss that's degrading the language. Claiming it's just an arbitrary point of view is not correct.

On the other hand, a lot of people don't grasp that when you Google a word, you likely do not find all the definitions that are in a decent dictionary, so it seems like the misinformation is fairly balanced between ignoring distinctions and making up distinctions/restrictions that didn't exist in the first place.

Well, the problem is there are still people around that would assume the old meaning is meant, so you can't convey meaning by using the word when it's in the weird transitional state. That, to me, just kills the word.

The problem comes when words describe an idea or concept. Usually, words lose specificity and become more generic.

Consider the word racist, "the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to physical appearance and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another." Many people who say "I'm not a racist" are correct. They can be xenophobes and/or bigots.

There is no specific English word to describe bona fide racists from David Duke to Charles Murray, without including xenophobes, bigots, and people with strong unconscious prejudge.

I agree, it's a big loss to discourse when a useful word loses its specificity and there's nothing else to take its place. That's why I am one of those who would to fight to keep the "correct" meaning of "disinterested".

I think it's important to distinguish between words like that and other entries in the article's list that are just trite figures of speech, and it won't hurt anyone if they shift meanings or even fall out of use altogether.

There’s no word to describe David Duke & Charles Murray without including xenophobes and bigots, because David Duke & Charles Murray are xenophobes and bigots.

There is no word to describe Jack Daniel's, and Laphroaig without including all other alcoholic drinks because Jack Daniel's, and Laphroaig are alcoholic drinks.

Of course there can be words to describe subsets of larger groups.

They’re also people; is there no word to describe them without including all people?

"racists from David Duke to Charles Murray"

I disagree that the absence of a word to link these two ideologically is a fault of the English language.

> bona fide racists from David Duke to Charles Murray, without including xenophobes, bigots, and people with strong unconscious prejudge.

Because the primary thing that diatinguishes them is eloquence when they talk and iq. The rest is largely the same.

It would be interesting to see whether more people would engage a switch for a moment or in a moment, given the instruction to do so momentarily, if they were also recently educated about the definition of a momentary switch.

Unfortunately, there would be no way to analyze the results, as I'm certain that most people would engage it in such a way as to apply both definitions even if they didn't know two existed.

The solution is avoid ambiguous words. If a word "Means" one thing but people use it differently, it is often a poor word choice. This means your vocabulary might get a little constrained, but it guarantees effective communication.

Nonplussed is a particularly bad word. The rest of their examples I think you can figure out based on context.

Mirror: https://archive.is/p8pyL

It begs the question, irregardless of whether we want to maximalize understanding or minimilize confusion.

Allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are ALL wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there.

As fyi... the thread's article is about a change in meaning for words that people know how to spell.

Your famous paragraph is more about "mishearing" words. Mondegreens:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen

>irregardless

That's not a word, ironically enough.

I believe the entire comment was tongue-cheeked.

Yes, I was being ironical.

I didn't see it immediately either, it's amazing how good my brain auto-corrected "maximalize" and "minimilize" without me even noticing.

Merriam-Webster raised the hackles of stodgy grammarians last week when it affirmed the lexical veracity of "irregardless."

The word's definition, when reading it, would seem to be: without without regard.

"Irregardless is included in our dictionary because it has been in widespread and near-constant use since 1795," the dictionary's staff wrote in a "Words of the Week" roundup on Friday. "We do not make the English language, we merely record it."

Merriam-Webster defines irregardless as "nonstandard" but meaning the same as "regardless." "Many people find irregardless to be a nonsensical word, as the ir- prefix usually functions to indicates negation; however, in this case it appears to function as an intensifier," the dictionary writes.

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-...

> "We do not make the English language, we merely record it."

Which is an evasion, because they know they are respected as an authority on the language and therefore they do actually make the language, or at least legitimise mis-use.

Summary:

> I have a somewhat arbitrary metric... the proportion of the first 20 hits on a Google News search reflecting a word’s old meaning

Even more interesting then to compare the Bing ranking to the Google ranking for any ... postmodern language changes, to confirm or disprove the rumor that Google results are 20% more ideological

There was a fine article about how to properly deprecate an API yesterday, so perhaps the same guidance applies?

Track usage, set deprecation headers (air quotes?), update documentation (might take a while), etc.

The algorithm is body language and context

The arbitrary metric is relationship

Any misunderstanding beyond that is a failure of both parties.

There seems to be a lot of pressure to rename words that comes from tribalism. Tribalism redistributes power and words can be leveraged distinguish a tribe.

Take for example calling a group of people "guys". Always when I was a child, and still usually now, guys referred to both genders when speaking to a mixed gender group. But it is empowering to the feminist tribe to be distinct, and interpreting guys as a kind of insult to females has that effect. It converts a statement meant to be neutral into a kind of oppression, by giving it a different meaning than the speaker intended. It separates a tribe and gives them reason for solidarity and sympathy.

That's a lot of mileage from a simple redefinition, and the result is positive where the resulting tribalism is a positive force. That it is a positive force is obvious to the tribe member. So I think this strategy will be a permanent feature of language evolution.

Women use the word guys when addressing a group of men and women as much as men do.

It’s a generational thing but even older women now use the word for addressing mixed groups.

Conversely, there seems to be an aversion from actor/actress in some circles whereas before it was observed more.

With regard to presently and momentarily, I prefer the more modern meanings. Disinterested: I’m dismayed it’s trending toward a confusing new meaning and hope I’m not misunderstood by the new meaning.

Sometimes prescriptivism works to keep things uniform, but there’s only so much you can hold back the tide.

There's a pretty strong argument that guys isn't a fully gender neutral term. For example, I think most people would read "I have dated a lot of guys" as meaning "men". Or perhaps take for example the title of the 1950 musical "Guys and Dolls". It seems that "guys" is just undergoing the same treatment that has largely happened with "men"; certainly there are people who would argue that "all men are created equal" does in fact include women, but it seems like saying "women are a kind of man" reinforces the assumption that male is the default. Would people be as charitable if I were to state "all women are created equal"? That "men are a kind of women"?

Also the fields which concern these issues are sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, for anyone who is curious.

Copy-and-pasting a comment I left elsewhere:

> “Guys” (a plural noun) is gendered. “You guys” (a pronoun) isn’t. It’s that simple.

words aren't uni-semantic, they are poly-semantic.

"Guys" as said in one context resolves to the meaning "people". In another, "men".

It is pretty much always clear when a speaker means one or the other.

As with, eg., "bank". No banker is complaining about the "collapsing banks" of a river.

It is pretty clearly an opportunistic misreading of "guys" to accuse a speaker of some how implying "men", or even "men" as a plausible implication.

It is only in the eye of the "feminist of language" do words fail to have contextual meanings; and it is this eye we should be suspicious of, rather than any possible double meaning.

> It is only in the eye of the "feminist of language" do words fail to have contextual meanings;

I don't disagree with your conclusion (though I'm not sure I agree with it either) but this is a dubious claim. This phenomenon is not unique to feminism. See, e.g. the singular "they" which many people in recent years claim to be entirely unable to understand.

I agree. "Ideologue" in general.

My claim is not exclusive.

You are completely correct that words have contextual meaning. Is part of that context perhaps historical or sociological? Why is it that male words also serve as our generics? Is there a history there worth examining? Downthread someone has linked a few articles about the topic, but I would encourage you to read Douglas Hofstadter's satirical essay, A Person Paper on Purity in Language, in order to get a better understanding of the feminist perspective. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

I mean, the etymology of the word women itself has this attribute, as a contraction of the concept of “the type of man who has a womb” so the whole thing is a bit complicated.

I didn't think that was it. Woman means "ones spouse", used to be used by anybody? Or do I have that wrong.

'Man' still means in some languages what "one" means in English in the sense of "one's friends are important". A person. Not a male.

But it isn't complicated. Today in English 'man' means a male. All the obfuscation using etymology and history are meaningless to a modern young person who knows what they're saying and what they're hearing.

From Middle English woman, from earlier wimman, wifman. The Middle English forms are from Old English wiman, wimman, from wīfmann m (“woman; female servant”, literally “female person”), a compound of wīf (“woman”, whence English wife) +‎ mann (“person”, whence English man). For details on the pronunciation and spelling history, see the usage notes below.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/woman#Etymology

It fooled me I guess. Since 'wif' is gender-neutral I thought it meant 'partner'. Sometimes it's used that way (in old writing) but not often.

I stand corrected.

If you are addressing a mixed gender group and say "Can all the guys please raise their hand?" what do you think will happen?

I don't think this word really refers to both sexes as strongly as you might think.

“Guys” (a plural noun) is gendered. “You guys” (a pronoun) isn’t. It’s that simple.

I think you might find it interesting to look at counterarguments to that as it's been addressed quite a bit. There's this sometimes cited intro [1] but I think [2] is a lot better with a literature review and history. Then there's Douglas Hofstadter's famous "You've Come a Long Way, Guys!" which you can probably find using sci-hub or something.

1. https://ovop.pw/whysexistlanguagematters.pdf

2. https://cogsci.indiana.edu/pub/KerryBodine-CmonGuys.pdf

I understand these arguments, but I can't help thinking that the use of the term "guys" is really a non-issue. As someone who's been living as an expat for the past 6 years, I speak 3 languages decently and another one poorly. If there is anything this has convinced me of, it's that languages in general don't make a lot of sense, and the meaning of words is purely defined by how they are used.

By that definition, "guys", when used to refer to a group of people, has always been a genderless term. In fact, growing up in a progressive town in the midwest, if I heard someone use the term "y'all" instead of "you guys", it would signal to me that they might not be that good on gender issues (due to an unjustified stereotype we had about southern people).

I think you can pick it apart, and find complex logical reasons why "guys" might be gendered in certain circumstances, but I think in 99% of cases when it's used, people are able to understand with complete clarity whether it's a gendered or genderless usage of the term.

And also I don't think it's going anywhere, because it's an incredibly useful term which has the right level of generality and casualness for a great many situations.

If you read the linked papers then you'll see that the argument isn't whether it can be genderless. That's not disputed since it's used that way effectively. It's about what the word evokes regardless of which meaning is meant and whether or not that is harmful to women. Connotation vs. denotation and the real world effects of the former.

Yes and my argument would be that in 99% of cases where this is used in the real world in a genderless context, there is no gendered evocation or connotation with the word. It simply means a group of people, and there is no harmful effect of using this term.

I believe you have to dig really deep and go through some mental gymnastics to find evidence of harm here. I don't fault the authors of these papers for exploring the potential issues with the term, but I believe this is a case where the academic reading is out of step with the reality of the situation.

You are absolutely right. In the dialect of colloquial American English that I grew up speaking, bare “you” can only be singular, and the default plural 2nd person pronoun is “you guys”. Telling us not to use it because of long-forgotten etymology would be as absurd as telling us not to use the word “they” because it’s a product of Norse imperialism.

Why should we try and change a word's meaning?

EDIT: Original title was: "How long should we cling to a word's original meaning? (2011)"

There is no “we” trying to change. Individual people just start doing it, then it catches on, and then the meaning has already changed for a lot of people.

Yet decades after it got a new meaning, we can't use "master" as a branch name because it had a different meaning in 1800.

No, you can still and should still use master and slave in the non-human slave contexts because that's how you hold the line against irrationality - and not coddle that unreasonable crowd.

To some those words have a hurtful meaning. You may consider them irrational, but they would consider you irrational.

I question the amount of people who find "master" in computing truly hurtful. The activist demographic pushing to change the terminology is exceedingly small, and I simply don’t see much authentic pressure from the masses behind it, unlike in the case of other terms that are now eschewed.

Also, once one is aware of etymology as a science, changing "master" in this context does seem irrational: in very many languages the general word for "mister, sir" and the word used for "master to a slave" are identical, and are we to change all these terms of address, too?

That's an emotional reaction and not grounded in logic because they're not differentiating the contexts. Differentiation, boundaries and context with words and language, is something then they need to learn - and if you coddle them, they're not going to learn that - so you're actually doing a disservice to them and society.

If a child is having a temper tantrum because you won't let them taste the bleach, you don't give in to let them taste the bleach.

And re: they will consider my response irrational - I just explained it with logic, and there is truth and logic - you don't fold to that behaviour just because someone's emotional maturity is underdeveloped or blocked - likely from coddling and adults in their life not being integral to hold boundaries for certain types of thinking/behaviour; this has lead to what's considered a neoliberal group - the same extreme exists on the conservative side as well, though it manifests differently.

I really like Mental Outlaw's take on this push against "offensive" language and toward "inclusive" language: https://youtu.be/tx2v0Y9Ci7I

Maybe they're too fragile.

I do use master for branches. I use also master and slave.

But, outside of tech, the meaning of slave did not changed one big. I did not seen "master" anywhere except master slave relationship (whether history or bdsm).

So I find theory that calling these two master and slave is unrelated to historical slavery implausible. People who use it first time being inspired by that seems most plausible origin of that name.

The etymology of "master" goes back at least to the Latin "magister" meaning "teacher", and is used in a multitude of contexts where one person is recognized as having some kind of revered knowledge or authority about some topic.

While I don't agree with the position that the word "slave" be expunged from tech for some putative role in trivializing historical slavery either, at least the argument does have a plausible premise. The anti "master" crowd though is laughably ignorant of language.

Well, if you start arguing this way, then you can also go all the way back and muse about what the word meant in Proto-Indoeuropean.

It's still obvious that the modern use of the master/slave combo comes from centuries of slavery, not from any prior meanings. As OP said, that can be shown by studying their meanings outside the technical context. The original meaning was retained in Academia but merely as jargon. Magister artium is a "master degree." There is no "slave degree", though. There is also "mastery", master/apprentice, and so on.

In other words, the offensive component of the combo is "slave", not "master." You can safely continue to use the master/apprentice combo.

There is no “slave branch” in git either.

Master is used in many contexts in English that have nothing to do with slavery. The first definition given by the OED is “a person or thing having control or authority”.

An arbitrarily chosen quotation: “ M. le Comte Benedetti, French Ambassador at Berlin..sped to Vienna with the latest proposal of his master.”

Certainly, this ambassador Count Benedetti was not a slave.

Sure you can and plenty of people still do.

Title was changed, it was: "How long should we cling to a word's original meaning? (2011)" - clearly containing the word "we", thus implying a "we".

It can even happen at the level of subculture-specific words (possibly NSFW depending on your W): https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Yiff

There's confusion when a word means one thing to one set of people, and the opposite to the other set of people. When someone says they're "nonplussed", what exactly are they saying?

The choices are to either agree more broadly to a single meaning ("change the meaning" to half of the people), or find another less ambiguous word.

Languages experience entropy, too.

Okay.

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