We are not bemused

[Snarky]

Personally, I can't really remember ever laughing-out-loud while playing an adventure game.  Perhaps others do.  I was never one who laughed at Warner Brothers cartoons either, and I was always bemused by the laughter of others.  ...and that might be the word that I'd use to describe my feelings toward what I would consider a comedy adventure game: bemused. Or at the very least, a feeling between amused and bemused -- a sort of "wry amusement."

No, it's not the word. "Bemused" means puzzled, confused, not "wryly amused".

[Snarky]

  Well, I guess we'll just have to let the writers of dictionaries duke it out.  Definition three on your link and the one below, given without survey results, describe my feeling well.  I did intentionally use the word to mean confusion before using to mean "wryly amused." 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bemused

Merriam-Webster are, rather prematurely in my opinion, endorsing a recent misuse of the word. To do so without comment strikes me as something close to professional misconduct. (It's perfectly fine to mention â€" although most dictionaries don't â€" that the word is nowadays used in this sense by many people, but it should then also be pointed out that it is historically incorrect, and considered unacceptable by most competent authorities. To do otherwise is to offer bad guidance to your users.)

Overall I consider M-W a pretty poor dictionary, and much prefer http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ (which combines American Heritage, Collins, RHK Webster's and others), or OED.com if you have access. Wiktionary.org is better as well.

[TheBitPriest]

Thanks, Snarky.  While you were posting, I edited my post to keep the thread on-topic.  You're welcome to PM me to continue the conversation.

[Mandle]

I have personally always understood the word to mean "confused" but here is an interesting viewpoint from this source:

As The Times's stylebook says, in careful, traditional use, “bemused” means “bewildered,” “confused” or even “stupefied.” An extended meaning is “preoccupied, lost in thought.”

But the similarity in sound to “amused” leads many writers to merge the meaning of the two words, using “bemused” to suggest a sort of detached amusement. A few dictionaries have started to accept this as an alternate sense.

Such shifts in meaning based on an initial misunderstanding are common as the language evolves. Sometimes the derived use becomes so widespread and accepted that it's pedantic and pointless to insist on only the original sense. For instance, not long ago we dropped our stylebook's longtime admonition against using “careen” â€" rather than “career” â€" in the sense of “lurch along wildly at high speed.” The original distinction had eroded so completely that there was little to gain in clinging to it.

But there's a reason to go slowly on such changes. Preserving the original sense of a word like “bemused” gives the careful writer an additional, precise tool. When its meaning starts to blur or merge with another word's, the result, at least for a while, is confusion and a loss of variety.

So let's try to hold the line on “bemused.”

So yeah, it does appear (in this writer's opinion at least) that the word's meaning is slowly evolving away from the original one. But then he goes on to basically say "Let's stop doing that", even though he says earlier that this is the natural way languages evolve...

Confusing article in all, but kind of supports both points of view...

EDIT: Posted before I saw the last comment above. I also won't be posting any further on "bemused". Anything further I post will be on topic. Sorry.

[Snarky]

Thanks, Snarky.  While you were posting, I edited my post to keep the thread on-topic.  You're welcome to PM me to continue the conversation.

Oh, we can do better than that. It's now its own thread.

So yeah, it does appear (in this writer's opinion at least) that the word's meaning is slowly evolving away from the original one. But then he goes on to basically say "Let's stop doing that", even though he says earlier that this is the natural way languages evolve...

Languages do evolve, certainly. However, most changes in meaning are either gradual slides across related ideas ("pretty" once meant "clever", then came to mean "fine" in general, and eventually "physically attractive"; "decimate" has been generalized to other proportions of destruction than 10%), or reasonable new uses based on analysis of the word itself and analogies with similar ones (as with "hopefully" and "momentarily"). It's the exception when a word suddenly takes on a completely different meaning, simply because people misunderstand it or mistake it for another one (career/careen is one of the few). That's not so much a matter of "evolving" as making a rift.

There may come a time when the original meaning of "bemused" is completely archaic, and only cranks will continue to insist on it. But that time has not yet come, and it is not inevitable that it will. Trends can be reversed, and if more people are made aware of what "bemused" really means, the misuse may abate. (If generations could be brainwashed into believing the nonsense against split infinitives and ending sentences with a preposition, surely they can be taught a pretty little word like "bemused".)

[Gurok]

Merriam-Webster lost all credit with me when they agreed with Alanis Morissette. http://www.merriam-webster.com/video/0035-ironic.html

[Baron]

I am submused by your Académie-esque lingo-pedantry.  English doesn't obey your rules, Man!  It does what it wants.

[tzachs]

This thread bemuses me.

I want to try and tackle this from a different direction, and provide a more compelling reason to change the meaning of bemused: the original meaning has more popular synonyms- confused, puzzled, perplexed.
On the other hand, there is no word for "detached amusement", and there should be. So in that sense the language is evolving by becoming richer.

Edit: oh, pretty much what Baron said...

[monkey424]

My stupid mate used to substitute ‘bemused' for ‘amused' in sentences which I'm sure he found hilarious. I found it mildly amusing.

[Snarky]

I want to try and tackle this from a different direction, and provide a more compelling reason to change the meaning of bemused: the original meaning has more popular synonyms- confused, puzzled, perplexed.
On the other hand, there is no word for "detached amusement", and there should be. So in that sense the language is evolving by becoming richer.

In 90% of cases, "amused" by itself will do the job. (To say one was amused by something, rather than "found it funny", indicates a certain degree of detachment by itself.) "Wry" will also usually fit such an attitude of ironic detachment, and pronouncing something "droll" (or "how very droll") often carries much the same connotation.

I am submused by your Académie-esque lingo-pedantry.  English doesn't obey your rules, Man!  It does what it wants.

Yes and no. English behaves as English-speakers use it, and while that vast body of people cannot be commanded, it can be influenced. The usage only arose because people didn't know the word and took a guess; if we can raise awareness (at least among professional and careful writers) that the interpretation is a mistake, the trend could conceivably be turned.

I'm a descriptivist, but I don't think that obliges me to think everything said by anyone is equally respectable. "A criteria", "a phenomena" and "an alumni" are wrong, although they're probably on their way to becoming accepted. "Could of" instead of "could have" is wrong, and will probably remain wrong even as some people continue to misuse it. I recently read about "cladly" (meaning skimpily, as in "cladly dressed"), apparently from a misinterpretation of "scantily clad", which is catastrophically wrong but that I rather hope becomes accepted because it is hilarious.

[miguel]

There's a saying in my country that goes:
"Who asks about the smelly breeze nature
is more often the reason behind it"

[Andail]

Funny that irony and Alanis should come up here, because me and Snarky (ahem, Snarky and I) exchanged some arguments on facebook recently about it. I don't recall the conversation entirely, but I think I was probably right and Snarky probably wrong.

This is also related to the recent re-listing of the word 'literally' to mean the opposite, 'figuratively', just because people don't know how to distinguish the two.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally (our friend merriam-webster again). Note how definition #2 is 'virtually'...

I mean, language is an organic thing, and all languages change, but when you take away meaning and blend it with other words that already function perfectly, I don't see the point.

[Stupot]

Another one people just say without knowing what it means is 'ignorant'.  "Oh she's justa ignorant bitch!" when "she" hasn't actually displayed any signs of ignorance. But here, I'm not even sure what the people who say it think it means. Perhaps they're relating it to 'ignore' so they're really saying "oh she's justa bitch what don't listen!".

I'm okay with 'bemused' evolving. I don't think it's doing any harm. And I wouldn't have much problem with a new meaning for 'ignorant' if only the people who were (mis)using it actually knew what they meant, rather than just saying it because it sounds like a 'big word what clever folken use'.

[Baron]

To win an internet argument I'm going to use an analogy of an internet truism, complete with improper spelling and gratuitous verbing: if haters gonna hate, then dummies gonna dumb ( ).  The "proper" language you (and I) cherish is really just the bastardized vernacular of our linguistic forebears.  Why don't we use all those beautifully convoluted noun declensions from olde English?  What ever happened to gender in nouns?  Why don't we pronounce the "w" in "two" or the "gh" in "light"?  In short, because our linguistic forebears were lazy, dim and ignorant.  And the usage of modern English on the internet suggests that this process of language evolution is alive and well!   The only rational response to this is to smugly recognize word "misuses" (or, from a broader perspective, "emergent linguistic norms" ), try our best to decipher the meaning behind them, and adapt our understanding of what English is accordingly; trying to correct the herd is about as futile as trying to command the tide.   

[Cassiebsg]

If English keeps "evolving" that fast like that, I better start thinking of re-learning the language again... http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/Smileys/AGS/smiley16_laughing.gif

But all language evolves, and we "old ones" just get annoyed at those "youth" that can't spell or write right... and one a couple years, the circle will complete, with the current youth getting old, and thinking that the young ones can't spell or write properly...

[Radiant]

I am cemused by this thread. Possibly even demused.

[Dadalus]

See this about Alanis Morissette: Ironic

(Adult Humour)

[Stupot]

I wonder if Alanis ever cringes when she remember recording that massive cock-up.

[Darth Mandarb]

I wonder if Alanis ever cringes when she remember recording that massive cock-up.

Actually she thinks; that song gets the definition of "ironic" completely wrong and yet it helped make me my millions and millions of dollars.  Ironic... don't ya think?

[Snarky]

I think "language changes *shrug*" is a bit of a cop-out. Sure, it does, but that doesn't we must be indifferent to the changes. And it doesn't mean that the changes are entirely out of our hands. Some seemingly unstoppable trends turn out to be fads, and campaigns to affect how people speak have been successful on occasion.

Funny that irony and Alanis should come up here, because me and Snarky (ahem, Snarky and I) exchanged some arguments on facebook recently about it. I don't recall the conversation entirely, but I think I was probably right and Snarky probably wrong.

This is also related to the recent re-listing of the word 'literally' to mean the opposite, 'figuratively', just because people don't know how to distinguish the two.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally (our friend merriam-webster again). Note how definition #2 is 'virtually'...

Yeah, the ironic thing is that I am literally the last person in the world to reject language change just based on authority.

"Literally", for example, doesn't bother me much. People have been using it as a form of hyperbole for (literally) three hundred years (and it's been in the OED and most other dictionaries with that meaning for more than a hundred), and actually it was always rather inevitable that they would, since asserting the actuality of what you're saying is a standard way to emphasize it, even if you're understood to be exaggerating or using a metaphor. Take some common intensifiers: really ("what I am saying is real"), truly, positively, absolutely... even good old "very" (and its archaic cousin "verily") is an assertion of truthfulness, via French. It's a pointless battle, because people are always going to exaggerate, and will always try to find ways to make their statements more emphatic. (There's a nice discussion of the history of and relationships between the different senses of the word here.)

I would defend Alanis and "Ironic" against the critics as well, though my take is a little different from Merriam-Webster's. While they seem to argue that "irony" is such a vague concept that anything goes, my argument is that many of the anecdotes in the song are clearly ironic under the strict definition, and that all the rest (which are too short to really judge) could easily be so depending on the context. I mean:

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
"Well, isn't this nice."

That is textbook irony on at least two levels!