pre-purchased

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:46 PM -0400 6/12/02, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>But, on-topic, I don't find making the distinction between stuff you
>paid for and ain't got yet and stuff you paid for and done got
>useless, and I think Bethany meant for "prepaid" to be the slightly
>less fancy synonym of "prepurchased."

ah, if they ARE synonyms.  (See previous note.)

>
>Could we have some lexical semantic explanation (unless, as is so
>often the case, it is something lurking in the phonology) of why they
>both sound real good to me and "prebought" sounds awful.
>

well, it may be just the Latinate vs. native vocabulary distinction.
Pre- for Latin stems (pre-pay, pre-purchase) but not for Germanic
ones (*pre-buy).  Probably totally off-base, but it allows me to
nominate the elegant "forebuy" as a replacement:  "I forebought that
pickup."   Well, mebbe not.

L