I ask you: What good is a word that now means both “perturbed” and “unperturbed”? This democratic inclusiveness of delusion effectively knocks “nonplussed” out of the language’s functional vocabulary. If it means two opposite things, it ceases to communicate. If I say I’m “nonplussed,” what do you know? I’m either dumbfounded or indifferent. I might as well have said nothing.

Semantic Drift | Harper’s Magazine (via the-grey-tribe)

See, this is interesting.

I had never, before seeing this post, encountered nonplussed being used to mean “nonchalant” or “unimpressed” –

– but I did have some vague inchoate sense that, despite a core meaning of “bewildered,” nonplussed carried an additional connotation of calmness and stoicism.  I’ve always used it to denote, er, a calm and stoic form of bewilderment.

Y’know.  The feeling that underlies a statement like “…welp.” or “I GUESS.”

I wonder how you get that kind of partial semantic seepage.