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?

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.

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.htm

Interestingly, 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.

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?

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...

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?

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.

lude
n.
5< QUAALUDE6 [Slang] a methaqualone pill

lude

Go get 'im, Dr. Bill!

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?

And corn pone is what you eat while you're deciding when the meeting is really going to take place.

...and a quick meeting without a break is a pone express

So is a telephone conference a phone pone?

Likewise, what steps do you have to go through before you become a postmaster pastmaster...

I guess these ludes are quite metallic, since I'm always hearing about "lude conduct".

getting pist, maybe

a legitimate antonym of to postpone or a newly made up nonsense word?

Or are these categories mutually exclusive or even comprehensive?

Can it be that we've gone all these many years without a word for this concept? We can say "rescheduled for an earlier time" but.

I do have to say that preponement has been such a rare event in my life that a special word has never been necessary :-(

On the very few occasions when it has occurred, a note or phone call asking if we could change the time/date to such and such, with a reason for the change, is all that has happened.

That isn't a valid reason for *not having a word, but!

Welcome aBoard, Mike--glad to have you! I've sent off to Brandon, our resident ASL expert (literally); with luck, he'll chime in with some enlightenment. Dr. Bill expressed perfectly how I feel about this word, which I had not heard before: At first I thought the coinage clumsy, but on second thought, I'm surprised ;it didn't
happen a long time ago. Meetings do, after all, get moved up all the time--someone has to go out of town, or the disaster is arriving sooner than expected, etc.

Here's the "entomology" (remember, tsuwm?) from a person on the site Sparteye gave:
Topic: 5) Move it up (11 of 11), Read 36 times
Conf: Word Fugitives, with Barbara Wallraff
From: Dorothy Glantz (dml.glantz@swipnet.se)
Date: Saturday, November 20, 1999 06:28 AM

The word 'prepone' is found in The New Oxford Dictionary of English, published 1998. It is listed as being Indian (from India) and is defined as: to bring forward to an earlier date or time. Example given: The publication date has been preponed from July to June. Surprisingly, its origin according to New Oxford is the 1970's!
Um--if it is bad form to quote from one word site on another one, would someone please let me know asap, and I'll delete?

Well, there's "move up" and "move back", but I can never remember which is which.

And a meeting on board a yacht (for example) a mobile pone?

Hmmm. For me there's "move back" and "bring forward" - "move up" is something I'd on a ladder or in a queue - so that'd make "move up" preponement and "move back" postponement...

Unless of course, the meeting had already been postponed once, but got re-rescheduled to its original time....

Thanks Jackie. I hope this isn't too much of a stupid question (or that everyone's from the 'only stupid answers' school of thought!), but what does ASL stand for?

Incidentally, I didn't mention it initially, but I'm working for a European-wide organisation, with people of many nationalities. For many, of course, English is a second or even third language. After a while you become immune to a certain amount of "clumsy coinage", but from time to time I do see/hear certain things that make me stop and think "I wonder if...".

"clumsy coinage"..."I wonder if...".

A) ASL = American Sign Language

2) Have you heard of Europanto? Or was it just a passing joke?

Þ) Funny you should mention. English has always been very willing to scoop any construction from any of its secondary users.

Europanto?

I hadn't heard of it, but I've just googled and been enlightened. I'm sure it must have been a passing joke, but perhaps with some real-life foundations:
People here, and I would imagine its the same in Brussels (where the man credited with creating Europanto works), often switch languages mid-conversation, or revert to their own language for occasional words which they can't translate. Listeners, if they can't translate such words themselves can usually infer their meaning from the context and communication is achieved.
Its not a huge leap from this "do what you can" approach to Europanto.

Nosotros haben a couple of types ici that spielen avec Europanto from Zeit a vez. Wir enjoyen ein bon joke linquistique.

Ick kann regarde el attraction...

Not though of any other pre/post examples, but in a similar vein there is:
prequel/sequel - of course none of the films were as good as the quel?
accelerate/decelerate
impede/expede
hypothermia/hyperthermia

and I'm sure many others..

Just got around to reading Monday's word (I've been a bit busy with graduation stuff), and remembered that we'd had a discussion of it here.

Monday's word for me was momism!?

Known in the real world as "mumism".

what, are you some kind of dadaist?

No, daddyist.

Arp!

Thanks for reviving this thread. I loved the "May I call you Miles?" (did mph even get that one?) and the "prequel/sequel - neither's ever as good as the quel" lines.

Monday's word for me was momism!? Anu mentions 'prepone' in his explanation.


I loved the "May I call you Miles?" Me, too! You're welcome.

Anu mentions 'prepone' in his explanation.

Teach *me to scroll down .

yeahbut®, it was the "re: surrection" that misdirected me.

http://catholic.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookup.pl?stem=praepon&ending=ere

"re: surrection" that misdirected me.
Heh, heh--success! As to scrolling down: that's why I love Monday words the best.

Can anyone think of a single word that does the job prepone does?

I couldn't before, and I can't, now. But I still don't like it very much.

I don't like it either. It was all of a piece with the linguistic snobbery of growing up speaking English in India - if it was a neologism (and, as we've discovered, the Indians invented it!) we tru-snobs thought it beyond the pale. I can't count the number of arguments I had with colleagues (this was in advertising, and you know these creative types) about whether or not the word was 'allowed'.

On the other hand, as Faldage points out, it is a useful word.

cheer

the sunshine "I was there when preponement was born" warrior