When I first heard George Carlin talk about this it made perfect sense to me. Pre, the most mis-used word in the English language; you see it all the time in print and hear in commercials: Pre-heat; pre-register; pre-lit; pre-recorded; pre-board (I really like that one); pre-wired…and so on. My favorite is when I heard on a TV commercial for an electric wheel-chair- “…if you pre-qualify…” I love that line. So would that mean that if I don’t ‘pre-qualify’…I can still ‘qualify’? lol. Afterall, pre-qualifying means that you have to qualify….before you qualify, right? It’s a 2-step process. lol.
Sure…you can preview something and have a premier or be considered prehistoric and even list something as being ‘pre-owned’; although that’s just another term for USED. Putting ‘pre’ in front of a word only complicates things.
Gone forever are the days of keeping it simple.
by Rich Brennan