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stranger
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A colleague of mine was just asked if they could prepone a meeting i.e. bring it forward.
Is this a legitimate antonym of to postpone or a newly made up nonsense word?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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prepone - PREPONE. South Asian speakers have evolved the logical word "prepone" to mean
the opposite of "postpone": to move forward in time. ...
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/prepone.html
At first I thought the coinage clumsy, but on second thought, I'm surprised ;it didn't
happen a long time ago.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Hello mph. May I call you Miles? I suspect that "prepone" is a jocular construct akin to the modern use of "couth". Google shows 2,730 hits, but they are mostly non-English sites or apparently the name of a hurtler. Still, there are plenty of instances of "prepone" as you have posited it, and I've used it myself, so it must be a goodly word  . Here is a link to a discussion of prepone when used in the contra-postpone sense: http://theatlantic.com/unbound/fugitives/moveitup.htmInterestingly, there is an American Sign Language sign for this concept, and the New Oxford Dictionary of English lists it. Also interestingly, I see that our own tsuwm participated in that discussion.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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there is an American Sign Language sign for this concept
Is the ASL of a form that could fit the construction, i.e., with a pone component and a pre component with a corresponding sign for the postpone concept that has a differing post component and an identical pone component?
Are there other words well accepted in English that have pre- and post- forms that I just can't seem to think of off the top of my head?
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Joined: Nov 2002
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stranger
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stranger
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Or Mike. Please do - I'm a friendly kinda guy.
Thanks for the replies. It seems to have enough credentials for me to further propogate its usage...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Faldage: there are quite a few such pairs. prewar, postwar, etc. But many pre-s and post-s
could be made into word-game candidates. Do you have to be a premistress before you can
become a postmistress?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yeahbut®, how about words where the part after the pre/post isn't used all by its lonesome. I've thought of prelude and postlude. We even have interlude, but no lude.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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lude
n.
5< QUAALUDE6 [Slang] a methaqualone pill
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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lude Go get 'im, Dr. Bill! 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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So prelude is the feeling I get that makes me want to take ludes, postlude is the morning after feeling and interlude is my feeling while still under the influence?
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