‘Prepone’ doesn’t exist in dictionary!!?

It has been more than a year since I wrote something on this blog.  Recently, I finished writing first draft of my PhD proposal. After that exercise, it is abundantly clear how ‘clarifying’ can it be to write your thoughts down. So I hope to have a discipline of writing things at more regular intervals.

Now, this post is about a mild shock I received when Firefox didn’t recognize the word ‘preponed’ in my email to friends. I looked up Merriam-Webster online, and prepone wasn’t found there. In India, we used it as a perfectly legitimate antonym to postpone.  Well, it is not a nonsense word.  Etymological roots of postpone are post + ponere (i.e., place after), so prepone makes perfect sense (i.e. place before).

It was very amusing to realize that the word that I have been using since something like 5 years doesn’t even exist in dictionary.  It is definitely a useful word and may be we will see it in the dictionary soon.

Edit: I could find it on dictionary.com. The entry comes from preview edition of Webster’s New Millenium dictionary.