prepone

[prettygoodword]

I've a handful of words beginning with P clumped together in my list of words to post -- which is good enough excuse for a theme week:


prepone (pree-POHN) - (Ind.) v., to bring forward to an earlier time.


A distinctive dialect marker of Indian English: "let's prepone the meeting." Or in this case, "Imma prepone the theme I was planning for next week." Coined in the 1970s on the model of postpone, to put off to a later time, replacing post-, after with pre-, before. (That Latin has praepōnō, to put before, is not a factor here.)

---L.

Comments

[lokifan]

That's so good! I wish British English would incorporate it (along with yesternight, from Ghanaian English.)

[prettygoodword]

Yesternight used to be in British English, since the middle ages -- not sure when it drifted out of use.