As A Metaphor, It's Maybe a 3-and-a-Half

[Dave Wilton]

The pre/post word that always strikes me as redundant is "pre-condition," as
in "Obama is willing to talk with the Iranians with no pre-conditions."

Some military synonyms for "postplan:"

--after-action review (or report)
--lessons learned
--hotwash (a review done immediately afterwards, while everything is fresh
in people's minds)


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Charles Doyle
Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 4:53 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: As A Metaphor, It's Maybe a 3-and-a-Half

"Preplan" (or "pre-plan") has always struck me as redundant, but it's well
attested and at least as old as the 19th century, the OED shows.

To be symmetrical, the local school district here holds "postplanning"
sessions for teachers at the end of the school year. The OED does not record
that term. "Postplan" gets 3,670 raw Google hits (123 in Google Books),
"postplanning" 1,540 raw Google hits (113 in Google Books). I don't know how
to search "pre-plan" or "pre-planning" effectively.

--Charlie
_____________________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:42:16 +0900
>From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject: Re: As A Metaphor, It's Maybe a 3-and-a-Half
>
>
>At 9:37 AM -0400 7/22/08, Doug Harris wrote:

>>The second sentence in the following quote, from a 7/22 LA Times story on
the importance of pre-planning a transition from one US president to
another, begs a question: When _can_ you build a plane while flying it?
(Answer, if it's a space station - which isn't a plane, but that's about as
near as you can come to being able to build a flying object while it's doing
so.)
>>dh

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