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#86731 - 11/12/02 02:28 PM Preponement?
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stranger
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?
#86732 - 11/12/02 02:43 PM Re: Preponement?
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Carpal Tunnel
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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.
#86733 - 11/12/02 02:49 PM Joined: Jan 2001
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Pooh-Bah
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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.
#86734 - 11/12/02 03:54 PM Joined: Dec 2000
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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?
#86735 - 11/12/02 04:08 PM Joined: Nov 2002
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stranger
stranger
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Thanks for the replies. It seems to have enough credentials for me to further propogate its usage...
#86736 - 11/12/02 04:28 PM Joined: Jan 2001
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could be made into word-game candidates. Do you have to be a premistress before you can
become a postmistress?
#86737 - 11/12/02 04:41 PM Joined: Dec 2000
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#86738 - 11/12/02 05:32 PM Joined: Jan 2001
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n.
5< QUAALUDE6 [Slang] a methaqualone pill
#86739 - 11/12/02 06:06 PM Joined: Mar 2000
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lower upstate New York
Go get 'im, Dr. Bill!
#86740 - 11/12/02 06:15 PM Joined: Dec 2000
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