nonplussing meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

nonplussing

adj

Etymology By surface analysis, nonplus + -ing.

Uncommon Confusing, bewildering, baffling or perplexing.

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,[…]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:
Nothing can be so nonplussing to a seeker as to have to grope about in a fog for the thing sought.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:

4 more examples

These brooms have in common a very nonplussing trait: they may die in winter, for no discernible reason.1993, Lacy Allen, Gardening With Groundcovers and Vines, HarperCollins, page 135:
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.2007, Sharon Cameron, Impersonality: Seven Essays, University of Chicago Press, page 143:
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,[…]2008, Kimberly Johnson, “A Psalm”, in A Metaphorical God: Poems, Karen & Michael Braziller, page 11:
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.2012 December, Lauren Wantz, Disapora, Xlibris US, page 233: