prequel (PREE-kwuhl) noun

A more common word in this day of sequels, I'd of thought?

Maybe Anu picked it in honor of its 50th anniversary. From The OED:

:1958 ‘A. BOUCHER’ in Mag. Fantasy & Sci. Fiction Apr. 94/2 Year 2018!..is the meaningless American retitling of James Blish's They Shall Have Stars..a ‘prequel’ to Earthman Come Home. "

Nauseating words indeed. Bad enough to give you a pre-side-threefold midquel crisis.

"To hurry pain is to leave a classroom still in session. To prolong pain is..."

I know what to prolong pain means but could anyone explain to me what to "hurry pain" means; is it simply the opposite of prolong?
The same as to "shorten" pain?

I suspect that's correct, that it means to avoid fully dealing with a painful situation, such as refusing to mourn a lost friend because it hurts too much. It's not a phrase I've heard before, so I'm just guessing.

Or, Yahia does like the analgesics industry.

Prequel is a funny word, because whoever coined it misanalysed sequel (< Latin sequēla), the root of the verb sequor 'to follow', yielding our non sequitur 'it does not follow' and being from PIE *sekʷ- 'follow' (link and link).

Then there was the rather humorous sketch in which the British commentator argued that Watergate was a scandal about water; if it had been a scandal about Watergate, it would have been called Watergategate. It's probably on YouTube somewhere if anyone cares to look for it.

Yup. Etymology is not everything when it comes to the formation and meaning of words.

Etymology is not everything

That, too, is funny. It's only because of etymology that I find prequel to be a funny word, otherwise, it's pretty standard and rather unremarkable.

In 1999 here in China,when the film of Star Wars-Episode One:The Phantom Menace was shown,the Chinese translation of the title is Prequel.
I watched this movie with my ex-girl friend,but we break up later,so I have a clear memory.