nonplussing

1. gerundparticiplepresentpresent participle and gerund of nonplus

comparative more nonplussing · superlative most nonplussing

1. uncommonConfusing, bewildering, baffling or perplexing.

   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

   5 more examples

   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

   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