Preventative vs. Preventive

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carmen calling from Ocean Beach.

What’s up?

Well, I have a question.

I graduated from an exercise science program. I’m not sure, actually, if it was a preventive health or a preventative health program, but neither really makes sense to me, you know, because we’re actually health promotion people, which may be a more appropriate word. But like in if you’re in the medical community, then it’s preventive medicine. So that totally makes sense. You’re preventing something with medicine. But in my case, it was called preventive health. So I’m wondering which word is appropriate. Preventive or preventative, right?

Correct.

And you say that you have a preference for which?

I don’t have a preference. I think my friends and I have debated it a number of times. And I think that the program was called preventative, but I’m not even sure because I didn’t call it either because it was confusing. This is one of those cases where there are two nearly identical words and one is hugely common and the other one is not. And in this case, you can probably guess which one is the most common.

Preventative?

No, no. Preventative is actually pretty rare by a factor of about 100 to 1. Preventive is by far and away the word most commonly chosen for this idea of something that’s designed to fend off illness or danger. That’s kind of what we’re talking about here, right?

Right, right.

Preventative, and a lot of people actually rail against preventative because of that extra syllable. And that’s one reason to avoid it because you don’t want people to be distracted by the fact that you used preventative and not preventive. If you’ve got something serious to tell them about disease, right?

Right.

Yeah, you want to prevent them from being…

That’s right.

So preventive is the better choice. Preventative is a real word. It means exactly the same thing. You can use it if you want to, but preventive is the better choice. Even though we’re, I mean, we’re not preventing health. Hopefully.

I see what you’re saying.

Well, no, the preventive isn’t an adjective necessarily that describes the thing that is being preventive. You would never say preventive illness.

Right.

Right.

So it’s always going to describe the thing that you are helping to protect.

Okay.

You are preventing on behalf of health. So preventive medicine, preventive health, preventive measures. Preventive surgery, that sort of thing.

Well, preventive measures is a little bit of an interesting case because there is that second case. I was hoping not to bring it up, but the second case is…

Good job!

I tried to prevent him, and it just didn’t. The noun measures in this case refers to the thing that is doing the preventing.

Right.

Right.

And I think that’s really the heart of your question, isn’t it? I mean, because the health isn’t doing the preventing exactly. You’re trying to help your health.

Right.

But like so many words, there’s not just one way to use this. But I can say this with 100% surety. No good, well-written English, will you find preventive as an adjective describing the thing that is trying to repel or keep from causing harm? It won’t say preventive cancer surgery.

I don’t think so.

To go before health with a positive meaning.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, thank you so much.

Thanks for calling.

You’re welcome.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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