Prepone

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:46 PM -0400 8/20/07, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>"Prepone" = "move to an earlier time", the opposite of "postpone", is
>(I guess) well known as a word which is usual in the English of India
>etc. but virtually unknown in the UK or the US. [What is this called?
>An Indicism? A Subcontinentalism?]
>
>Of course it's a fine word and it must have occurred now and then in
>the US (also UK, etc.), right?

It's an example I use in class of Indian English; I suppose if
pressed I'd be willing to call it an Indicism.  I don't doubt the
U.S. occurrences, but I've never encountered one directly.  (In the
last group below, there's some interference from "prepose", which of
course is adapted from the participle of the same Latin verb.  I've
always thought it a neat division of labo(u)r that "prepone" is used
(if at all) only for temporal occurrences, while "prepose" is
reserved--at least by linguists--for spatial ones.

LH

>
>Here is a US example from 1946 (from Google Books with a snippet,
>therefore not 100% reliable ... but it looks good):
>
>----------
>
>Walter Phelps Hall, _Iron Out of Calvary_ [WW II history]
>(Appleton-Century, New York, 1946), p. 258:
>
><<... asserting that the original date of September 15, as planned
>for the grand assault, had actually been preponed, not postponed.>>
>
>----------
>
>There is also a Google Books (snippet) example in the periodical
>_Jewish Education_, but I can't date it: <<actual study from the book
>begins in the second year, with a few schools preponing it to the
>third term of the first school year.>> It looks 20th-century, and I
>suppose it's probably not from India.
>
>There are also occasional instances of "prepone" with other meanings,
>e.g., = "prefix" [verb] ("add as a prefix"/"place in front")
>(synonymous "antepone" also occurs).
>
>-- Doug Wilson
>
>
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