"preventative"

[Peter A. McGraw]

I seem to hear both "preventive" and "preventative" all the time and to use
them indiscriminately myself.  Nonetheless, I wonder if any of our U.K.
list members would care to weigh in on whether there is a preference on
their side of the pond for either one or the other, perhaps paralleling the
British preference for "orientated," which sounds hickish to educated
American ears (as opposed to "oriented").

Peter Mc.


--On Sunday, July 18, 2004 10:55 PM -0700 "Arnold M. Zwicky"
<zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:

> On Jul 18, 2004, at 5:23 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> Boston Sunday Globe, July 19, 2004, p.E11
>> "... preventative services ..."
>> Well,  an ounce of preventation is worth a pound of cure.
>
> ca. 988,000 google web hits.  (compared to ca. 3,140,000 for
> "preventive".)  it might not be your idea  of standard, but it's damn
> common.  AHD4 lists "preventative" as an alternative to "preventive",
> in fact.  MWDEU tells us that "The critics have panned _preventative_
> for over a century, preferring its shorter synonym _preventive_ in
> spite of the fact that both words have been around for over 300 years
> and both have been in regular use by reputable writers."  there is
> more, including the analogy to "authoritative" and "talkative".
>
> also: ca. 3,610 hits for "preventation" (which i don't much like, but
> there it is).
>
> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************