Yesterday, quite separately, two friends used a word with which I was unfamiliar. “He was non—pulsed,” said the first friend, describing what I understood to be her grandson’s untroubled reaction to something. After listening to her story and responding appropriately as a friend should, I corrected her. “It’s nonplussed,” I said definitively, “not non-pulsed.”
We talked about that for a bit: her misuse and my correction and and we laughed because she was quite nonplussed about her grammar being assaulted. When I got home, a friend called and we had a good long chat and I’ll be hornswaggled if she didn’t say, “I was non-pulsed ….”
What? Was“non-pulse” a word that had snuck into the English lexicon without my noticing? Are people actually experiencing an absence of pulse? Maybe. The word “Nonpulse,” it turns out, is not in either the Oxford or Merriam Webster Dictionaries, but it is in the urban dictionary and defined as “fails to excite, leaving the pulse unchanging.” Hmmm. Okay. I concede.
The language is changing and I gotta get with the program. And yes, horn-swaggled is a word. So is “apology” which I owe to my friends for being such an insufferable know-it-all.
It's the objective pronouns in the subject position that really get me! (But I bite my tongue.) xo
Which is to say, I suppose, without feeling of any kind! xo