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I've always considered it a retronym, purporting to be the converse of "retroactive." Prescriptivist that I am, I won't use it myself and I wince whenever I hear it. It's a bit like the devising of "analog watch" that only came into being after the emergence of digital timepieces, though by now that one has become an acceptable distinction.

At least it's appropriate to differentiate analog from digital in this context. Is "pro-" really the inverse of "retro-", or have they mixed languages here? Should we agitate for "ante-" instead?



It's the converse of reactive, not retroactive. Father Steve's explanation pretty much covers it, though why he would think that preventing a crime would be merely "thought to be better" than solving one escapes me, unless he's worried he'd be out of a job as a judge if it became too effective. I can see that it could get out of hand if the police used draconian tactics to prevent the crimes, arresting them for being suspected of thinking about committing a crime, but anything can get out of hand if not done properly.

The closest I have seen to a legitimate argument against the use of "proactive" was that the term "anticipatory" would be an acceptable alternative, but I don't think that the two terms are close enough to being synonymous for that argument to be cogent. "Proactive" is more of a generic attitude towards a generic problem and "anticipatory" more a specific action directed towards a particular instance of a specific type of problem.

Being proactive would be dealing with and solving problems that tend to lead people into a life of crime; anticipating would be identifying people who are likely to commit crimes and capturing them just before they commit the particular crime.