I was recently chatting with a senior at the company where I'm soon joining and a part of the conversation went on like this:
VT: and they are trying to advance the dates..
Me: "advance" as in prepone?
VT: yup, advance means prepone (except that there is no such word as prepone in English)
ME: Oh oh!
I was astounded! Wait a sec, that cant be true. I'm pretty well read and for years it had made perfect sense. "Post"-pone is "to delay" and "pre"-pone meant the opposite. Being the skeptic that I am, off I went to
Oxford, only to discover this:
trans. To bring forward to an earlier time or date. Opposed to postpone.
In later use, most frequent in Indian English.
The English it seems, never saw that logic. As far as I'm concerned, right from the day when my 3rd standard teacher announced "The school reopening dates have been preponed by a week", that word has been etched onto the deepest of grey cells, only to be recalled into abuse every time an exam or an event came by. You dont doubt your junior school teacher, do you?
I just wonder how many more of these are yet to be discovered; I just hope they dont come out at the wrong moments! ;-)
