Aru in Omaha, Nebraska, says friends and colleagues tease him about his use of prepone, usually used to mean “move an appointment to an earlier date or time.” It’s a word commonly used in Indian English, is morphologically sound, and quite useful. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Prepone: Put Before”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Good afternoon, this is Aru Panwar.
Hi, Aru, welcome to the show. What can we do for you?
My question was about a word called pre-pone, just the opposite of postpone in my mind.
But I have been subject to great ridicule by my colleagues, my girlfriend, her name is Erin.
And then there are a couple of my colleagues who are sitting right across me who are laughing at me while I’m talking to you.
Oh my goodness!
I’m hoping that this is my chance at redemption, and you can tell me that this is a real word that actually means something.
What kind of work do you do where pre-pone comes up?
Yeah, and where are you?
I’m a head and neck cancer surgeon, so we take care of our patients, and sometimes we have clinic appointments or meetings or surgeries.
And I would say, how about we bring this case forward or bring this meeting forward?
In other words, can we pre-pone this surgery?
And they look at me like I am speaking an alien language.
And I gather that you are from the subcontinent somewhere.
Yes, I grew up in India.
And when I tried to research this word, it actually says it’s Indian English.
That’s right.
Yeah.
Primarily, pre-pone, meaning to move to an earlier time, is primarily used in India today.
But what’s really interesting, there’s an older pre-pone that was widely used in, well, maybe not widely used,
Used enough to be recorded in the dictionary from at least up until the 1700s, which meant to be
To put something before something else. Like you might prepone a digit in front of another digit,
Like put the seven in front of the six, prepone the seven in front of the six. But that kind of
Faded out. But the cool thing about prepone and the Indian usage is it’s a perfectly cromulent
English word. It is very morphologically sound. It follows the standard rules for creating new
Words in English. It is used by millions of people. It is solidly, definitely an English word.
It just isn’t used in the United States very often. But there’s no accounting for people’s
Tendency and enjoyment in teasing other people.
Well, I was hoping to be redeemed by my conversation with you, but obviously you’ve
Given them an excuse to continue ridiculing me now.
Oh, we have? We were trying to legitimize your use and say, this is a valid, real English word
Just because them not knowing it is a sign of their lack of their worldliness.
Oh, my God.
But we’ll see how that comment goes with my colleagues and my girlfriend.
We’ll see.
Well, here’s the thing.
In terms of clarity, I think it’s really useful because if I say,
Let’s have the meeting on Wednesday, and then Grant says, no, let’s move the meeting up.
Yeah.
I’m thinking, do you mean Thursday or Tuesday if you move the meeting up?
That’s right.
Both the expression move a meeting up and move a meeting forward both have some confusion about which direction the meeting is going.
Yes, I have missed deadlines because of that.
You can find many discussions about this.
If you move the meeting up an hour, I don’t know.
Do you mean move it to 12 or move it to 10?
Yeah, it’s like turning up the air conditioning.
I agree.
Yeah.
So I think prepone is fine.
Obviously, you’re going to have to conform to the workplace.
And if you want them to stop teasing you, I don’t know, go to HR or, I don’t know, get them to use the word.
Persuade them that it’s a really good word and they should start using it.
And we will have one hospital in America where everybody’s using the word prepone, and that would be amazing.
Maybe I’ll start writing the word in some journal articles and see what my editors have to say.
Perfect.
That’s a good idea.
And you let us know how that goes, all right?
Sounds great.
Take care.
Well, thank you for taking my call, and we all enjoy your show very much.
So keep up the good work.
Thank you.
Well, hi to your colleagues.
All right.
Bye.
Take care.
I think that’s a word that we should adopt because it’s so specific.
And I’m telling you, I’ve had confusion about meetings and deadlines before.
I know what you’re saying.
Yeah.
You know, if you say, let’s move it up.
It’s comprehensible.
It follows the pattern that we make English words.
It’s got many decades of history behind it, not even counting the older, now out of date meaning.
Right.
Postpone, prepone.
Prepone.
Why not?
Right.
And the number of people in this country that come from the subcontinent and speak subcontinental English,
Why not?
Right.
So give us a phone call and talk about it.
877-9…
Grant laughed at a pun.
Did everybody hear this?
