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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

nonplussed.

Unsure how to act or respond; bewildered, perplexed.

10 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/nɒnˈplʌst/Received-Pronunciation/ˌnɑnˈplʌst/General-American

  1. Unsure how to act or respond; bewildered, perplexed.

  2. Unaffected, unfazed; unimpressed.

    US · informal · nonstandard
Where this word comes from

From nonplus (“state of bewilderment or perplexity”, noun) or nonplus (“to bewilder or perplex (someone)”, verb) + -ed (suffix forming adjectives, and the past tense and past participle forms of verbs). Nonplus (noun) is derived from Latin nōn plūs (“no further, no more”), from nōn (“not”) + plūs (“additionally, more; further”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- (“to fill”)). The etymological sense is similar to being left speechless as a result of confusion: the nonplussed person can say or do “no more”. Adjective sense 2 (“unaffected”) is probably from a misinterpretation of the first element of the word as the prefix non- meaning “not”.

verb/nɒnˈplʌst/Received-Pronunciation/ˌnɑnˈplʌst/General-American

  1. simple past and past participle of nonplus

    form-of · participle · past
Where this word comes from

From nonplus (“state of bewilderment or perplexity”, noun) or nonplus (“to bewilder or perplex (someone)”, verb) + -ed (suffix forming adjectives, and the past tense and past participle forms of verbs). Nonplus (noun) is derived from Latin nōn plūs (“no further, no more”), from nōn (“not”) + plūs (“additionally, more; further”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- (“to fill”)). The etymological sense is similar to being left speechless as a result of confusion: the nonplussed person can say or do “no more”. Adjective sense 2 (“unaffected”) is probably from a misinterpretation of the first element of the word as the prefix non- meaning “not”.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.