The Times runs a sub-blog that's adapted from their weekly self critique newsletter(which, thinking of it, I should try to get a copy of when next I'm there). It's
an interesting dissection of style and grammar in the paper, mainly focusing on what works and doesn't. For example, the latest is a mediation on bemused:
Word to Watch: ‘Bemused’
The popularity of this modifier seems undiminished by the fact that many writers, and readers, aren’t quite sure what it means.
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” — rather than “career” — 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.” Here are some recent cases (including three on one day) where we missed the mark, or where the sense was so fuzzy it was hard to know what we meant.
