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nonplussing. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
nonplussing, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
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English
Etymology
By surface analysis, nonplus + -ing.
Verb
nonplussing
- present participle and gerund of nonplus
Adjective
nonplussing (comparative more nonplussing, superlative most nonplussing)
- (uncommon) Confusing, bewildering, baffling or perplexing.
1716, John Willison, “A Help For The Right Improvement of Communion Sabbaths”, in A Treatise Concerning the Sanctifying of the Lord's Day. And Particularly, The Right Improvement of a Communion-Sabbath, Direction V, page 255:We have to with a Heart ſearching God, who will find out every unworthy Communicant to his utter Shame and Confuſion ; when God examins ſuch, his Queſtions will be Nonpluſſing and Confounding, […]
1907, William A. Bryce, H. de Vere Stacpoole, “The Reavers: A Tale of Wild Adventure on the Moors of Lorne”, in The Boy's Own Annual, volume 29, In the fog (section XXV), page 803:Nothing can be so nonplussing to a seeker as to have to grope about in a fog for the thing sought.
1993, Lacy Allen, Gardening With Groundcovers and Vines, HarperCollins, page 135:These brooms have in common a very nonplussing trait: they may die in winter, for no discernible reason.
2007, Sharon Cameron, Impersonality: Seven Essays, University of Chicago Press, page 143:Specifically, it is the idea of the friend, in conjunction with the idea of a conversation, that is, the idea of the ordinary in conjunction with the presumption of benevolence (if friend could be assumed to imply such a connotation, and if conversation could be supposed to have this content), which illuminates what renders these propositions so nonplussing.
2008, Kimberly Johnson, “A Psalm”, in A Metaphorical God: Poems, Karen & Michael Braziller, page 11:First the high pitch of blood inside the ear
then another high sound inside the first,
a vibrato caterwaul from that stunned
and blurry infant face. Such blank noise.
So nonplussing that foreign tongue, that most
foreign body, open-mouthed and trembling, […]
2012 December, Lauren Wantz, Disapora, Xlibris US, page 233:We look like a council of two, a single pair of Sanhedrin warriors or elder Seraphim, we look like a solitary nation of no history, a duprass, Kurt Vonnegut called it. And what’s more nonplussing than anything else, we look happy.